The History of the Chair
From each of the furniture objects, the chair may be primary. While the majority of other pieces (apart from the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair must be regarded here in the common sense, from stool to throne to complex pieces such as the bench and sofa, which can be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic piece; it historically is semiotic of social place. In the old royal courts there were important signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to squat on a stool. From the past century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior position, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised level.
As a furniture construction, the chair encompasses a variety of different purposes. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, or 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.
Modern living has designated unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair types has been evolved to conform to changing human uses. For its unique association with man, the chair comes to its full significance only when being used. Though it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly regarded by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter require each other. Thus the individual elements of the chair have been given names as the areas of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic work of a chair is to support our human body, its value is tested generally by how completely it does fulfill this practical use. Within the build of the chair, the maker is bound for the static laws and principal measurements. In these restrictions, however, the chair builder has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair is an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that held unique chair shapes, expressive of the leading object in the areas of craft and art. In such civilisations, special mention 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 result of careful scheme, are seen from tomb findings. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs formed not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular structure was created. There was apparently no marked change between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular non-royals. The real variation lied in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was designed for an easily stored seat for army. As a camp stool that kind stayed til much later points. But the stool then also was made as the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool being forgotten. This can today be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the form of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats are created of wood. The easy make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, reappears but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient specimen still around but as in a wealth of pictorial material. The iconic kind is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them would be displayed. These curving legs were most likely to have been manufactured out of bent wood and were as such needed to bear extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super stable and were clearly drawn.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; quite a few casts of seated Romans show chairs of a more heavyset and apparently somewhat crudely constructed klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair is seen in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in particular types of considerable iconicism around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be traced as long as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed folio of images and works of art was kept, displaying the insides and exterior of Chinese households and the designs of furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing similarity to pictures of ancient chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be designed both with or without arms though always having the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one form, it must be said, the stiles are lightly curved above the arms so as to sit correctly with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). The three parts had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of this back splat exercised an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could only to a limited capability reinforce corner joints (and furthermore were loose to top that off) indicate an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs most likely were kept for the senior people in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the overall effect of both furniture designs is stylized. The structure and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual parts do not look to have been fixed by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Artworks project a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in 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 period, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be seen in engravings of the interior 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 kind of chair may also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the style actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The style 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 of styles—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat conforms 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 over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are made from wood of rather thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and finer examples would be further embellished with highly 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 rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier 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 reknowned 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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