Of all furniture forms, the chair could be the most important. While most other objects (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be viewed here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds such as the bench and sofa, which can be looked upon 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 exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or aesthetic craft; it was historically a symbol of social status. At the historical royal courts there were social differences between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. In the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has developed iconic of superior dignity, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher platform.
In its furniture purpose, the chair is used for a variety of different purposes. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has demanded special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds have been evolved to suit to evolving human uses. Due to its unique link with man, the chair appears to its full significance only when used. While it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is seen best and evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the several elements of a chair were labeled according to the areas of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear function of the chair is to support our body, its value is tested primarily for how completely it fulfills this practical purpose. Within the structure of the chair, the carpenter is restricted within particular static legislation and principal measurements. Through these regulations, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There are societies that have created individual chair types, as seen of the premier endeavour in the arenas of handling and creativity. Within these such cultures, a mention can 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 result of masterful craft, are now a finding from tomb discoveries. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs designed not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular design was obtained. There was from our knowledge no notable change in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The only change was in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted as an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool this form continued for much later times. But the stool also existed in the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats were made out of wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, came again somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of these is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient specimen still extant but found in a wealth of pictorial items. The best known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them are displayed. These curved legs were most likely to be crafted out of bent wood and were in that case needed to bear great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very strong and were visibly denoted.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; designs of statues of seated Romans show chairs of a heavier and which appear to be a slightly crudely built klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist period. The klismos chair can be seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some types of notable originality within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be followed as long as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of images and works of art was preserved, detailing the interiors and exterior of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an interesting likeness to pictures of older chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two iconic chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be found both with or without arms but never missing a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one form, however, the stiles had been slightly curved above the arms for the purpose of conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). Together, all three areas had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of a back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would merely to a restricted extent embolden corner joints (and then are loose as a result) represent a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were reserved only for older persons, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decoration aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not look to have been joined together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Works of art display a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same era, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be displayed in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself with its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally 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 solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and finer items can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popular in several 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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