Out of all furniture needs, the chair could be of most importance. While many other pieces (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair can be regarded here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to developed types like a bench and sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic piece of art; it is historically an indicator of social ranking. From the past royal courts there were social differences between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to use a stool. During the 20th century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as an indicator of superior standing, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In a furniture creation, the chair ranges from a wealth of various makes. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make 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, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has designated unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms have evolved to match to changing human desires. Because of its unique connection with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when being used. While it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly judged with a person using it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the different parts of a chair were named like the parts of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original purpose of the chair is to support a body, its credit is tested principally for how completely it fulfills this practical role. In the creation of a chair, the chair maker is restricted in certain static law and principal measurements. Within these rules, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an epoch of several thousand years. There were peoples that made unique chair types, seen of the premier work in the spheres of skill and aesthetics. In those civilisations, individual 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 construct of careful make, were found from tombs. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs designed akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular structure was crafted. There was in our knowledge no particular change in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The real change lied in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was manufactured as an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool the stool persevered for much later periods. But the stool also then was created for the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can now be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats are made of wood. The simple build of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, came up somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of those is the folding stool, made of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient item still around but seen in a trove of pictorial items. The iconic kind is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which were shown. These strange legs were presumed to have been executed of bent wood and were therefore had huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely durable and were particularly pointed out.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; a number of models of seated Romans show examples of a denser and apparently rather crudely crafted klismos. Both types, light or heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair is known in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular kinds of marked individuality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as far back as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of drawings and artworks had been preserved, showing the interiors and exterior of Chinese houses and their furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting familiarity to styles of older chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there were two iconic chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair was seen both with and without arms but always having the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one kind, it has been seen, the stiles are marginally curved over the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). The three sections were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of a back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a particular limit reinforce corner joints (and then were loose to top it off) signify a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs likely were kept only for elderly people in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resultant effect of both furniture items is stylized. The structure and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been joined together by either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and fixed in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Artworks display a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interior of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself with 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 style—that is, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny 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 principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of rather thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket chairs can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal 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
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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