From each of the furniture items, the chair may be primary. While the majority of other items (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair should be said here in the common sense, from stool to throne to complex items like the bench and sofa, which might be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously labeled.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic creation; it can also be a signifier of social status. At the Medieval royal courts there were important signifiers between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to use a stool. In the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has become an identifier of superior standing, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a higher level.
As its furniture creation, the chair is employed for a range of different makes. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, 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.
Contemporary lifestyle has demanded special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair shapes have changed to conform to differing human desires. From its significant importance with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when in employ. Whereas it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is seen best and regarded best by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the several areas of a chair are named likened to the limbs of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first role of the chair is to support a human body, its worth is tested firstly for how fully it measures up to this practical use. In the manufacture of the chair, the carpenter is bound under some static regulation and principal measurements. In these rules, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair is dates of several thousand years. There are civilizations that made unique chair forms, as expressive of the topmost task in the areas of technique and art. From these peoples, a note should 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 objects of expert make, are today a finding from tomb findings. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs formed like those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular form was crafted. There appeared to be no marked differentiation between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The general variation was in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the evidence of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was crafted to be an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool that form stayed for much later points in time. But the stool also then was designed for the character of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can now be found, 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 are constructed in the form of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats are formed with wood. The plain make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, was seen again at some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient specimen still around but as seen in a large amount of pictorial material. The best known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs could be visible. These unique legs were thought to have been manufactured with bent wood and were therefore bore extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super solid and were visibly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; a number of statues of seated Romans display examples of a denser and are a somewhat crudely constructed klismos. Both types, the light or heavy, were brought back within the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special types of notable originality around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be charted as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of images and works of art was protected, showing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing likeness to pictures of older chairs.
As in Egypt, there were two iconic chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was constructed both with or without arms however always with its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one kind, it has been seen, the stiles could be slightly curved above the arms for the purpose of conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). Each of the three sections were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of this back splat then had an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only just to a particular limit embolden corner joints (as well as being loose additionally) signify a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or have rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and might have had a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were reserved for elderly people, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of these furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the fact that the individual items do not appear to have been put together with either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Paintings project a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, in the same period, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the style actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast numbers, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and expensive 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 forms—that is, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat suits 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 over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and finer designs may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the preference in large 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 popular 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 styles 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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