From all the furniture forms, the chair may be of the most importance. While many other pieces (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair should be used here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to complex makes such as a bench and sofa, which may be regarded 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 exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic object; it historically was semiotic of social place. Within the old royal courts there were significant signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to sit on a stool. From the 20th century, the director’s or manager’s chair has risen iconic of superior status, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
In its furniture purpose, the chair is employed for a wealth of various makes. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used 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 make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has demanded special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms has perfected to conform to different human desires. Because of its particular relationship with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when utilised. While it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly tested by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter require the other. Thus the individual limbs of the chair were given names corresponding to the elements of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary work of a chair is to support the body, its worth is judged basically for how suitably it measures up to this practical role. Within the build of the chair, the designer is limited by the static legislation and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair is an era of several thousand years. There existed cultures that had distinctive chair shapes, seen of the foremost object in the spheres of technique and aesthetics. Among such societies, a 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of skilled make, were a finding from findings made in tombs. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs designed as akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular construction was created. There appeared to be no noteworthy change in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The simple change was in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the choice of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was designed to be an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool the chair persisted for much later periods of time. But the stool also was designed for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats were created of wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, appeared again at some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of those is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient object still extant but as found in a large amount of pictorial evidence. The archetype is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground near Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them are displayed. These unique legs were understood to have been executed out of bent wood and were as such had a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very strong and were overtly signified.
The Romans emulated the Greek designs; some models of seated Romans are evidence of a thicker and in appearance slightly more crudely designed klismos. Both designs, the light or heavy, were popularised within the Classicist period. The klismos chair is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some types of profound individuality of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as well as in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of drawings and artworks had been kept safe, detailing the interior and exterior of Chinese houses and the furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing similarity to representations of older chairs.
As in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That chair is designed both with and without arms but always with a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, it must be said, the stiles could be delicately curved above the arms in order to conform correctly to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). Together, the three sections had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of this back splat had an introduction for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only just to a particular limit embolden corner joints (as well as being loose to top it off) signify an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs most likely were kept for older persons, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of both of these furniture designs is stylized. The structure and aesthetic issues are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been constructed by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Paintings show a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same time, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not determined that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with its elegant 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 of styles—that is, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike practices in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket designs might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the favourite 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
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 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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