The History of the Chair
From each of the furniture pieces, the chair might be paramount. While the majority of other forms (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair can be regarded here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs such as a bench and sofa, which can be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently labeled.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic object; it historically is semiotic of social ranking. In the Medieval royal courts there were significant connotations between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to make do with a stool. Since the last century, a director’s or manager’s chair has become an identifier of superior position, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher floor.
As a furniture purpose, the chair holds a variety of different makes. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has demanded particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types has been changed to match to evolving human needs. For its significant connection with man, the chair lives to its full meaning only when utilised. While it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly evaluated with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter need each other. Thus the different areas of the chair are named like the areas of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original job of the chair is to support a body, its credit is judged principally for how well it does fulfill this practical function. In the design of the chair, the maker is restricted under certain static regulation and principal measurements. Through these limits, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over dates of several thousand years. There existed cultures that made individual chair forms, as seen of the topmost task in the spheres of craft and design. Out of such cultures, individual 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful make, were seen from discoveries made in tombs. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular structure was obtained. There was from our understanding no significant change in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular non-royals. The simple variation existed in the complexity of ornamentation, in the choice of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was made as an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool this type stayed til much later periods. But the stool then also played the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can today be noted, 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 were constructed in the form of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are created with wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, came again at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this form is the folding stool, made from ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient specimen still around but as seen in a variety of pictorial objects. The best known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those would be seen. These unusual legs were thought to be created with bent wood and were probably bore extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super solid and were visibly indicated.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; some statues of seated Romans show examples of a heavier and apparently rather less delicately designed klismos. Both styles, the light or heavy, were popularised during the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular brands of marked originality in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as long as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of images and artworks was protected, displaying the inside and outer parts of Chinese households and the furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a trove of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing familiarity to images of older chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been constructed both with and without arms however never missing a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one type, it must be said, the stiles could be delicately curved above the arms so as to suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the chairback). Together, all three areas had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of the Chinese back splat exercised an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would merely to a restricted limit reinforce corner joints (and furthermore are loose as a result) are an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs likely were allowed only for elderly persons 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 differ very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The constructive and decoration issues are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual items do not seem to have been constructed by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and fixed in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, gave 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 interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair may also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the design actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in considerable numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself with its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of quite thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket items might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the preference 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 products 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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