The History of the Chair
From each of the furniture objects, the chair could be the most important. While most of the other pieces (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair should be viewed here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to derivative pieces like the bench or sofa, which should be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic artwork; it is also an indicator of social place. At the past royal courts there were plain connotations between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. In the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed a signifier of superior rank, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised platform.
In its furniture form, the chair is utilised for a wealth of various purposes. There are chairs manufactured to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (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 make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has derived particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds has been changed to conform to evolving human uses. For its unique relationship with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when being used. Whereas it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is seen best and judged best with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter require one another. Thus the various limbs of the chair are labeled according to the limbs of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious job of the chair is to support our human body, its worth is tested firstly for how well it measures up to this practical use. In the construction of the chair, the chair maker is limited under the static regulation and principal measurements. Through these regulations, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over a period of several thousand years. There were societies that had distinctive chair types, as expressions of the topmost task in the areas of handling and creativity. Among such cultures, 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of skilled craft, are now found from tombs. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs designed like those of some animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular structure was made. There was from our view no noteworthy change in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The simple variation lies in the level of ornamentation, in the selection of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was designed to be an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool the type persisted til much later times. But the stool also was designed as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are created of wood. The simplistic build of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, appeared again but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this type is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient object still in form but as in a trove of pictorial items. The better recognised is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs could be shown. These curving legs were presumed to be crafted of bent wood and were therefore had to bear a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely solid and were particularly indicated.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; a number of statues of seated Romans show designs of a more heavyset and apparently kind of more crudely constructed klismos. Both designs, the light and the heavy, were revived in the Classicist period. The klismos chair can be seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in special types of notable iconicism in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be followed as long as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged folio of sketches and paintings was protected, showing the inside and outside of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting familiarity to images of past chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been designed both with and without arms however always having its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles are delicately curved above the arms in order to fit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its chairback). Together, the three parts are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the design of a back splat later had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could merely to a restricted limit reinforce corner joints (as well as being loose additionally) represent a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs likely were allowed only for the senior persons in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic issues are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been fixed with either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Works of art show a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same period, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is evidenced in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the design actually was born in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by its shapely 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 of forms—that was, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of quite thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive designs might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the preference 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 popularised 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 brands 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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