From each of the furniture objects, the chair might be of most importance. While many other items (save for the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is looked upon here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to derivative types such as a bench and sofa, which can be looked upon 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 interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic piece of art; it was also semiotic of social standing. Within the Medieval royal courts there were significant distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. Since the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior dignity, as well as in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In its furniture form, the chair is utilised for a wealth of various makes. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (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 have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has designated particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair types have adapted to match to changing human uses. For its significant association with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when in use. While it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly judged by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the individual elements of the chair have been named likened to the areas of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental work of the chair is to support our human body, its value is judged generally on how suitably it fulfills this practical use. Within the manufacture of a chair, the chair maker is restricted in certain static legislation and principal measurements. Under these limits, however, the chair builder has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an epoch of several thousand years. There existed peoples that created individual chair types, expressions of the premier work in the areas of technique and design. Within these such societies, particular mention 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 construct of masterful design, are now known from tomb findings. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have had four legs crafted not unlike those of a particular animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular form was crafted. There seemed to be no noteworthy difference between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical populace. The general variation existed in the brand of ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was crafted as an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool that stool persevered during much later days. But the stool also took on the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can now be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are created out of wood. The easy make of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then came again some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this form is the folding stool, made of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient fossil still existing but as found in a trove of pictorial items. The best recognised is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those would be displayed. These unusual legs were most likely to have been crafted of bent wood and were therefore had to bear extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely strong and were visibly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; designs of casts of seated Romans offer examples of a thicker and which appear to be a somewhat less intricately crafted klismos. Both styles, the light or the heavy, were seen again within the Classicist period. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of marked individuality of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be tracked as long as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of sketches and works of art has been protected, detailing the interiors and exteriors of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing resemblance to pictures of previous chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, two chair forms persisted in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be constructed both with and without arms but always with a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one style, it must be said, the stiles were slightly curved by the arms so as to suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the back). Together, all three limbs were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of this back splat had an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could merely to a particular extent support corner joints (as well as being loose additionally) signify an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or has rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs probably were only for the senior persons, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The construction and aesthetic aspects are combined in a way that is at the same time naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been constructed by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Artworks show a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is seen in engravings of the interior of rich 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 is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the style actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in considerable numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and grants 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 on the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of rather thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket items may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the favourite in several 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 well-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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