Out of all furniture needs, the chair might be of the most importance. While the majority of other objects (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be used here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to developed items such as a bench or sofa, which might be considered 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 exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support or aesthetic object; it is also an indicator of social placement. In the historical royal courts there were social signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to use a stool. In the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as a signifier of superior rank, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In its furniture creation, the chair can be employed for a wealth of various forms. There are chairs manufactured to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has developed special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair shapes has been adapted to fit to evolving human desires. From its significant connection with man, the chair lives to its full significance only when being used. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is seen best and clearly evaluated with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the different areas of a chair are given names likened to the names of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple function of a chair is to support our body, its value is tested generally on how completely it fulfills this practical job. In the construction of a chair, the maker is limited in some static rules and principal measurements. Inside these regulations, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair extends over dates of several thousand years. There existed societies that had made distinctive chair forms, seen of the leading object in the arenas of skill and aesthetics. Among these such civilisations, individual note 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful scheme, are now found from findings made in tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs crafted akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular form was created. There seemed to be no significant change between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The main variation lies in the brand of ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was made as an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this stool stayed til much later points. But the stool then was created for the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today be noted, 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 can not be folded as the seats are worked from wood. The easy structure 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 appeared some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this type is the folding stool, of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient specimen still existing but from a trove of pictorial material. The most recognisable is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs could be seen. These unusual legs were presumably executed of bent wood and were as such had to bear great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely durable and were particularly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; existing statues of seated Romans show designs of a thicker and are a kind of less delicately built klismos. Both kinds, light or heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist time. The klismos design is found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular types of considerable individuality of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be traced as long as that of Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of sketches and artworks has been preserved, detailing the interiors and exterior of Chinese households and their furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a collection of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing resemblance to designs of previous chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there were two standard chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair was seen both with and without arms however never missing its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles had been lightly curved on top of the arms for the purpose of fit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). Together, the three parts had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of this back splat then had an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only just to a limited ability reinforce corner joints (and then are loose additionally) are a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were allowed only for the senior individuals in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resultant effect of these two furniture items is stylized. The structure and decoration issues are combined in a way 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 adjoined by either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art 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, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same era, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be found in engravings of interiors 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 kind of chair is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not held that the innovation actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were 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 crafted in large quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of rather thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket items might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and found 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 commonly known and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
Within 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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