From all the furniture forms, the chair may be of the most importance. While many other items (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair can be said here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to developed items for example a bench and sofa, which might be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic object; it is also semiotic of social placement. At the historical royal courts there were plain distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. During the 20th century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed a signifier of superior rank, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher platform.
As its furniture purpose, the chair can be utilised for a variety of different makes. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the olden days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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. There are chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms have adapted to fit to different human uses. Due to its close importance with man, the chair exists to its full meaning only when in use. Although it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly judged with a person using it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the individual limbs of the chair are named according to the names of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental role of a chair is to support a human body, its worth is valued principally on how fully it does measure up to this practical role. Within the creation of the chair, the carpenter is restricted for certain static laws and principal measurements. Inside these limits, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an epoch of several thousand years. There were civilizations that have created iconic chair forms, expressive of the premier craft in the areas of handling and art. Among these such peoples, a note 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of careful make, are today known from tomb findings. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted similar to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular form was obtained. There was apparently no marked variation in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The simple variation exists in the complexity of ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was crafted to be an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that stool existed until much later points in time. But the stool also was created for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be found, 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 were in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are made out of wood. The easy build of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, can be seen some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this type is the folding stool, from ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient object still existing but found in a large amount of pictorial evidence. The significant kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them were displayed. These unique legs were likely to have been executed of bent wood and were thus bore a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very durable and were particularly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; designs of models of seated Romans are designs of a more heavyset and in appearance somewhat more crudely designed klismos. Both designs, the light or the heavy, were seen again within the Classicist era. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some particular types of profound originality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be charted as far as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of images and artworks has been kept safe, showing the inside and exterior of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing likeness to styles of older chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be designed both with and without arms although never missing a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one style, it must be said, the stiles are slightly curved by the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its chairback). Together, the three parts had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of a back splat later had an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would merely to a particular limit embolden corner joints (as well as being loose additionally) are a design signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were reserved for senior family members, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of both furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual members do not seem to have been constructed by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and held in its 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 display a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same time, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is evidenced in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by its harmonious 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 form—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat conforms 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 small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of relatively thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and finer examples would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popularised 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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