From each of the furniture pieces, the chair could be of the most importance. While most of the other items (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair can be viewed here in the common sense, from stool to throne to further types including the 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 overtly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece; it is also an indicator of social placement. Within the past royal courts there were important signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. In the past century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as a symbol of superior status, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised platform.
As its furniture form, the chair is employed for a variety of different makes. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the past there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We design 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 up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has developed particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms have changed to conform to evolving human uses. Because of its close importance with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when being utilised. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly judged with a person using it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the several areas of a chair are given names like the elements of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal function of a chair is to support a human body, its credit is evaluated generally on how fully it fulfills this practical function. Within the structure of the chair, the maker is restricted with the static laws and principal measurements. Within these boundaries, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over dates of several thousand years. There existed peoples that have created significant chair types, as seen of the principal task in the industries of technique and aesthetics. Out of these peoples, special mention 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of expert scheme, are now known from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs shaped like those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular form was created. There was to our knowledge no particular difference in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The general difference was in the complexity of ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed for an easily packed seat for officers. As a camp stool that type existed for much later days. But the stool also existed in the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were formed of wood. The plain make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, can be seen some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this kind is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient object still existing but as seen in a wealth of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs can be visible. These unique legs were thought to be created from bent wood and were therefore subjected to extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super durable and were particularly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; existing models of seated Romans show evidence of a heavier and which appear to be a rather less intricately built klismos. Both styles, light and heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist era. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special types of profound uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be followed as well as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of drawings and works of art has been kept, showing the interior and outside of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing resemblance to images of previous chairs.
Same as in Egypt, two fundamental chair forms existed in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was constructed both with and without arms though never without the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, however, the stiles were delicately curved over the arms to sit right with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the chairback). All three areas are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of the back splat later had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that just to a restricted capability stabilise corner joints (and furthermore were loose in the result) signify an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—a left over maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs presumably were allowed only for elderly persons, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resulting effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decorative parts are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been fixed by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised onto one another and fixed in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Works of art display a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same period, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is seen in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair might also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced 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 with its harmonious 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 style—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more upmarket chairs would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all of the 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 varied in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popularised 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 versions 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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