From all the furniture objects, the chair could be paramount. While most of the other objects (save for the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be looked upon here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to further chairs like a bench or sofa, which may be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or an aesthetic craft; it is also symbolic of social rank. From the historical royal courts there were social connotations between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to sit on a stool. Since the last century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been iconic of superior dignity, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
As its furniture construction, the chair can be used for a number of various models. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has derived new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair kinds have been evolved to fit to differing human needs. Because of its close association with man, the chair lives to its full importance only when utilised. While it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly tested with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter need each other. Thus the individual elements of the chair are labeled like the elements of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental job of your chair is to support a human body, its value is evaluated basically on how suitably it does fulfill this practical function. In the construction of the chair, the maker is bound in some static regulation and principal measurements. Through these restrictions, however, the chair creator has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that had made distinctive chair forms, as expressions of the leading endeavour in the spheres of craft and aesthetics. Within such peoples, individual mention 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 items of careful craft, are seen from tombs. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs formed not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular construction was crafted. There was apparently no notable change between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The simple difference was in the decorative ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was manufactured to be an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool the kind stayed during much later times. But the stool then also was made as the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can already be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are created out of wood. The easy make of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then came up but somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of those is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient item still extant but from a trove of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs could be shown. These curved legs were most likely to be crafted in bent wood and were therefore put under extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super strong and were particularly denoted.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; existing casts of seated Romans show evidence of a more heavyset and apparently rather crudely crafted klismos. Both styles, light and heavy, were brought back in the Classicist era. The klismos influence is seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of marked individuality of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be charted as far back as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of sketches and works of art has been kept, with images of the interior and outer parts of Chinese homes and the furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing familiarity to representations of previous chairs.
As in Egypt, two major chair forms existed in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is seen both with or without arms however never missing its square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one kind, it has been seen, the stiles are marginally curved on top of the arms to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a chairback). Each of the three areas had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of the back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that merely to a limited capability embolden corner joints (and then are loose in the result) signify a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or has rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs presumably were kept for older persons, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have come to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decoration parts are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual items do not look to have been fixed by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and held in its place in the style 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 design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore 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 is seen in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair can also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not believed that the design actually was born in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely proportions and fine 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 progressed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes its 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 small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of rather thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and finer items may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and won favour 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 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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