Out of all furniture forms, the chair may be the most imperative. While most of the other pieces (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be used here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to derivative pieces for example a bench and sofa, which can be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and aesthetic craft; it can also be symbolic of social rank. In the Medieval royal courts there were significant signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to utilise a stool. During the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has risen an identifier of superior standing, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
As its furniture creation, the chair is employed for a number of various purposes. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (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 have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has demanded particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes has perfected to suit to growing human uses. Due to its close association with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when in employ. Though it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and judged best by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the several parts of the chair have been given labels as the limbs of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary work of a chair is to support our human body, its credit is judged basically on how suitably it does fulfill this practical purpose. In the creation of the chair, the carpenter is bound in particular static rules and principal measurements. Within these boundaries, however, the chair designer has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an epoch of several thousand years. There were civilizations that have created individual chair shapes, expressions of the highest task in the arenas of technique and design. Out of those societies, particular 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of masterful make, are today known from tomb discoveries. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs shaped as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular structure was obtained. There seems to be no significant variation from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The general difference lied in the level of ornamentation, in the evidence of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was crafted as an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the kind persevered til much later periods of time. But the stool also played the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are made out of wood. The easy build of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared again at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient item still in form but found in a variety of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside 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 can be visible. These odd legs were presumed to have been executed in bent wood and were likely to have been had a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very strong and were visibly denoted.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; quite a few casts of seated Romans show chairs of a heavier and in appearance rather less intricately constructed klismos. Both types, light and heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence is seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular types of notable individuality in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be traced as far back as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of drawings and paintings had been preserved, showing the inside and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are some chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing similarity to styles of older chairs.
As in Egypt, two chair forms dominated in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair is found both with and without arms though never without its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles were delicately curved above the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). The three sections had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the design of this back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a restricted ability reinforce corner joints (and are loose as a result) signify an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were only for elderly people in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is usually seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The construction and aesthetic elements are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been constructed by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and held in 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. Paintings show a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of 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 in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same period, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is displayed in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair may also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not held that the style actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by its elegant 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 is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of fairly thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive items can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could 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 instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and won favour 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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