The History of the Chair
From all the furniture items, the chair may be the most imperative. While the majority of other objects (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is meant to be said here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to developed types for example a bench or sofa, which may 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 stimulating as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and aesthetic object; it can also be an indicator of social rank. In the Medieval royal courts there were important distinctions between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to squat on a stool. During the 20th century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as an indicator of superior status, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In a furniture form, the chair can be used for a range of various makes. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the past there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has demanded special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair shapes have adapted to match to differing human desires. Because of its particular relationship with man, the chair lives to its full importance only when in employ. Whereas it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly judged with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the different areas of a chair are labeled corresponding to the names of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic purpose of a chair is to support the human body, its value is valued generally from how well it does measure up to this practical purpose. Within the construction of the chair, the carpenter is bound with the static legislation and principal measurements. Within these limitations, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair extends over a period of several thousand years. There existed societies that created iconic chair forms, seen of the premier work in the industries of skill and creativity. In such peoples, individual note 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 structures of masterful make, are today found from findings made in tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs structured like those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular structure was obtained. There appears to be no marked variation in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The real change existed in the complexity of ornamentation, in the particulars of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was developed as an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool that chair existed during much later days. But the stool then existed in the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can now be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the construction of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were made of wood. The simplistic make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, is seen somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient item still extant but from a trove of pictorial material. The most well known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those can be displayed. These strange legs were considered to have been crafted with bent wood and were therefore had to bear great pressure under 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 signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; some casts of seated Romans display designs of a denser and in appearance somewhat less delicately designed klismos. Both styles, the light and heavy, were seen again within the Classicist period. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of profound individuality of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be traced as far as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of images and paintings has been protected, displaying the interior and outside of Chinese households and their furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing resemblance to representations of past chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there were two standard chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be seen both with or without arms however always with a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one kind, it must be said, the stiles were delicately curved over the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its chairback). Each of the three parts are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of the back splat had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could merely to a particular extent stabilise corner joints (and furthermore were loose to top that off) are a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or is given rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs likely were reserved for older family members, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resultant effect of both of these furniture designs is stylized. The construction and decorative elements are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual parts do not appear to have been fixed together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Paintings display a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be seen in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not determined that the innovation actually originated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in vast numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its elegant 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 developed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are constructed from wood of relatively thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and finer designs can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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 reknowned and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
Within 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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