From all the furniture items, the chair might be primary. While many other forms (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be regarded here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs including a bench or sofa, which can be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic craft; it historically is a signifier of social place. In the historical royal courts there were plain differences between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to sit on a stool. Since the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been an identifier of superior status, and in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a higher floor.
As its furniture construction, the chair can be utilised for a wealth of various purposes. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has derived special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms have been changed to suit to growing human requirements. Because of its close relationship with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when in use. Whereas it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen best and evaluated with a person using it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the individual elements of the chair were labeled corresponding to the elements of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal work of your chair is to support the body, its value is judged firstly on how fully it does measure up to this practical purpose. In the creation of a chair, the designer is restricted in some static laws and principal measurements. Inside these limitations, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair covered an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that held individual chair forms, as expressive of the highest craft in the industries of skill and creativity. Within these peoples, particular mention 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of skilled scheme, were found from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed not unlike those of a particular animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular form was obtained. There was in our understanding no significant difference between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The main difference existed in the decorative ornamentation, in the selection of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was manufactured to be an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool the form stayed around until much later points in time. But the stool also was created as the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the shape of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were worked out of wood. The simplistic build of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, appeared at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this kind is the folding stool, from ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient fossil still extant but in a trove of pictorial objects. The better recognised is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them can be displayed. These unique legs were presumably executed in bent wood and were therefore had to bear huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very solid and were visibly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; a number of casts of seated Romans display designs of a more heavyset and apparently somewhat crudely designed klismos. Both designs, the light or heavy, were revived within the Classicist epoch. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of marked originality of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be traced as long as in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full serial of drawings and artworks had been kept, displaying the interiors and exterior of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are some chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing resemblance to styles of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, two chair forms dominated in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be found both with or without arms although never without the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, it has been found, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms to conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). Together, the three limbs were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of this back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would only to a restricted capability stabilise corner joints (and are loose as a result) signify a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were allowed only for older persons in the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the way that the individual members do not seem to have been put together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Artworks show a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same era, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be displayed in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair may also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not held that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and delicate 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 styles—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of fairly thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more expensive designs can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won favour 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 commonly 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 brands 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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