Of all furniture items, the chair might be the imperative one. While many other pieces (except the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is meant to be regarded here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms for example a bench or sofa, which should be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly definitive.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic item; it historically is semiotic of social ranking. From the historical royal courts there were clear connotations between possessing a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to squat on a stool. Since the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior status, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a higher floor.
As a furniture form, the chair can be utilised for a wealth of variations. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the olden days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has developed special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes has evolved to match to growing human needs. For its particular importance with man, the chair exists to its full meaning only when in use. Although it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and tested with a person using it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the individual parts of the chair were labeled likened to the areas of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic job of your chair is to support your body, its credit is judged principally by how fully it does measure up to this practical role. In the design of a chair, the carpenter is restricted by certain static law and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair designer has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that have created unique chair forms, as seen of the principal craft in the arenas of skill and design. In these such cultures, particular note must be made of ancient Egypt and Greece; China; Spain and The Netherlands in the 17th century; England in the 18th century; and France in the 18th century during the ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of skilled make, are seen from findings made in tombs. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs designed akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular form was crafted. There was from our view no notable variation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The main variation exists in the decorative ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed for an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool that chair persisted during much later points in time. But the stool then was designed as the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats were worked out of wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then came again but some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient fossil still existing but as seen in a large amount of pictorial items. The best recognised is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs can be seen. These odd legs were presumed to be created with bent wood and were thus had a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely solid and were visibly pointed out.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; evidence of statues of seated Romans are designs of a heavier and in appearance rather less intricately designed klismos. Both features, the light and the heavy, were brought back within the Classicist period. The klismos chair is used in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special types of profound individuality around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as long as that of Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged folio of images and works of art has been protected, displaying the interior and outside of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an amazing resemblance to styles of ancient chairs.
Just as in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair can be constructed both with and without arms however always having the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one image, though, the stiles are lightly curved on top of the arms to sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). Together, the three areas were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of a back splat had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that merely to a limited limit reinforce corner joints (as well as being loose to top it off) represent a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited seat. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs presumably were kept only for older individuals, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of both furniture designs is stylized. The construction and decoration aspects are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual parts do not look to have been constructed by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Paintings project a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same period, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is seen in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair can also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of rather thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket chairs would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popular in many parts of the Continent, had no parallel in England. Prior to 1740, the most commonly used wood was walnut; thereafter, and for the rest of the century, it was mahogany. Walnut, though beautiful in hue, was soft and therefore less suited to wood carving than to rounded, curving forms. Outer surfaces, such as the back and seat frame, were usually veneered. During the walnut period, highly overstuffed armchairs, covered with leather or embroidered material, were also developed. The best upholstery of this period is precisely and firmly modelled and accentuated by braiding or tacks. When imports of mahogany became common, no specifically new chair designs appeared, but the character of the woodwork changed. Mahogany, having a firmer, closer grain, could be cut thinner, which meant that individual parts of the chair could be more slender in shape. Mahogany also lent itself better to carving than walnut. Carving was concentrated more on the arms and back than on the legs, which as a rule were straight and smooth with chamfered (bevelled) edges and molding. There was a wealth of variety in chairback designs, featuring elegant, pierced, vase-shaped splats or two upright posts connected by horizontal slats (ladderback).
Alongside the French Rococo chair and the best English chairs in walnut and mahogany, the stick-back chair was relatively unaffected by the stylistic changes of the day. Originally a medieval form, known, for example, from paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and still found in mid-20th century in the churches and inns of southern Europe, the stick-back chair (in all of its variations) consists basically of a solid, saddle-shaped seat into which the legs, back staves, and possibly the armrests are directly mortised. This typically peasant form underwent a renewal and a process of refinement in England and America during the 18th century. Under the name Windsor chair (a term that seems to have been used for the first time in 1731) or Philadelphia chair, it became well-known and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
During the Neoclassical period, no basic changes took place in chair forms, but legs became straight and dimensions lighter. Backs in the shape of classical vases replaced the fanciful outlines of the Rococo period. Around 1800, freely executed imitations of Greek and Roman chairs of the klismos type, with curved legs and backrest, appeared. French chairs of the Empire period, executed in dark mahogany and embellished with ornate bronze mounts, created a ponderous effect.
In cheaper products of inferior workmanship, bourgeois chairs of the 19th century carried on the traditions of the 17th and 18th centuries. The only real innovations were the bentwood (wood that has been bent and shaped) chairs in beech that became popular all over the world and were still made in the 20th century. Around 1900 the continental Art Nouveau and Jugendstil styles (French and German styles characterized by organic foliate forms, sinuous lines, and non-geometric forms), and the Arts and Crafts movement in England (established by the English poet and decorator William Morris to reintroduce idealized standards of medieval craftsmanship), gave rise to original chair designs by Eugène Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaudí in Spain, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland. These new furniture styles did not exercise wide, let alone decisive, influence. The Art Nouveau chairs designed by the French architect Hector Guimard, for example, are collector’s pieces, but his name is known to a broader public only because of his fanciful entrances to the Paris Métro.
Modern
After World War I, the Bauhaus school in Germany became a creative centre for revolutionary thinking, resulting, for example, in tubular steel chairs designed by the architects Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and others. During World War II, the aircraft industry accelerated the development of laminated wood and molded plastic furniture. The dominant chair forms of this period go back to designs by Alvar Aalto, Bruno Mathsson, and Charles and Ray Eames. Rapid technical developments, in conjunction with an ever-increasing interest in human-factors engineering, or ergonomics, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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