From each of the furniture forms, the chair may be the primary one. While most other objects (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is used here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to complex types for example the bench and sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic artwork; it historically was symbolic of social ranking. In the historical royal courts there were social signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to cope with a stool. During the past century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior dignity, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In its furniture creation, the chair can be employed for a wealth of different models. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the olden days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since 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. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has developed special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair forms have been evolved to suit to growing human needs. From its close importance with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when being used. Whereas it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and tested with a person using it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the various elements of the chair were given labels likened to the areas of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic function of the chair is to support our human body, its worth is valued generally for how well it does measure up to this practical purpose. Within the manufacture of a chair, the builder is bound with the static regulations and principal measurements. In these restrictions, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an era of several thousand years. There are cultures that made significant chair forms, as expressive of the premier object in the spheres of technique and creativity. Out of such civilisations, a 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of skilled scheme, are today found from tombs. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs structured similar to those of some animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this design a stable triangular structure was created. There seems to be no notable change from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The only difference exists in the brand of ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was crafted for an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool this kind existed during much later periods of time. But the stool then was designed for the character of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration 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 are created of wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, was seen again somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of these is the folding stool, of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient object still extant but as seen in a wealth of pictorial evidence. The best known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs were shown. These unique legs were thought to have been manufactured with bent wood and were in that case needed to bear a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very stable and were plainly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; existing casts of seated Romans show examples of a thicker and are a slightly more crudely crafted klismos. Both styles, the light or the heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist period. The klismos design can be seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular types of notable individuality within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China cannot be followed as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of sketches and works of art had been kept safe, with images of the interior and exteriors of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are some chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing likeness to representations of past chairs.
As in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair was found both with and without arms however never missing the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one kind, it has been seen, the stiles had been slightly curved by the arms to conform correctly to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). All three sections had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of the Chinese back splat later had a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that just to a particular extent support corner joints (and then are loose into the bargain) signify a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. 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 texture. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs most likely were only for elderly persons in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The manufacture and decorative elements are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual items do not look to have been put together by either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Works of art project a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same time, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be seen in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that was, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of quite thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more upmarket designs can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the preference 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
In 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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