From each of the furniture items, the chair could be of most importance. While most of the other pieces (save for the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair was viewed here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to further types such as the bench or sofa, which can be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic item; it is also symbolic of social place. Within the Medieval royal courts there were important distinctions between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. Since the 20th century, the director’s or manager’s chair has become an identifier of superior position, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
As a furniture purpose, the chair can be employed for a variety of variations. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has designated new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types has been perfected to match to evolving human needs. For its significant link with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when used. Whereas it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and tested by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the several limbs of a chair have been given names like the names of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal work of a chair is to support the body, its credit is evaluated firstly for how completely it does measure up to this practical purpose. In the build of the chair, the maker is bound by particular static laws and principal measurements. Through these regulations, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that had made iconic chair shapes, expressions of the topmost endeavour in the areas of handling and aesthetics. Out of such civilisations, special note needs to 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of expert scheme, are now found from tomb findings. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs designed akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular form was crafted. There seems to be no particular change from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The simple difference was in the brand of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was crafted as an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool the stool persevered til much later days. But the stool also played the use of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool neglected or 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 were in the form of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats are made with wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then came up at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of these is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient fossil still extant but from a wealth of pictorial objects. The most well known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which could be shown. These creative legs were likely to have been manufactured in bent wood and were therefore put under extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely durable and were visibly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; some statues of seated Romans show chairs of a more heavyset and apparently somewhat less intricately designed klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were revived in the Classicist period. The klismos chair is found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of profound uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as long as that of Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of drawings and works of art has been protected, with images of the interiors and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that display an intriguing resemblance to designs of previous chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there existed two particular chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was designed both with and without arms however never missing a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one image, however, the stiles were slightly curved above the arms in order to conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). Together, the three sections had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of this back splat exercised an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could only to a restricted limit stabilise corner joints (and then were loose as a result) signify a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs most likely were kept for elderly individuals, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been affixed by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Paintings project 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 bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a 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 kind of chair can be seen in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair is also made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methods even with 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 extraneous wood has been sanded away, and finer chairs may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popular 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 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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