Out of each of the furniture objects, the chair could be the imperative one. While most other items (save for the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair was used here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further kinds including the bench or 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 obviously distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or aesthetic piece of art; it historically is a symbol of social status. Within the past royal courts there were important differences between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to utilise a stool. In the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as an indicator of superior dignity, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised level.
As its furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a variety of different models. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has designated unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types have been changed to match to differing human desires. Because of its particular relationship with man, the chair exists to its full meaning only when being utilised. Although it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and regarded best with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter require one another. Thus the various elements of a chair were named as the parts of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental work of a chair is to support the body, its credit is valued principally by how fully it does measure up to this practical use. In the construction of a chair, the maker is limited by particular static regulations and principal measurements. Through these limitations, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over a period of several thousand years. There were peoples that held significant chair types, seen of the premier work in the spheres of skill and design. Out of those cultures, particular mention must 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of skilled scheme, are now a finding from tomb discoveries. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs designed as akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular design was crafted. There appeared to be no notable variation in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The real difference lies in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was developed to be an easily packed seat for army. As a camp stool this type persisted for much later days. But the stool also then was designed for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can now be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration 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 formed of wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this kind is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient specimen still existing but from a wealth of pictorial objects. The iconic kind is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them are visible. These creative legs were probably executed in bent wood and were in that case had great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very solid and were visibly indicated.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; a number of casts of seated Romans display examples of a heavier and in appearance somewhat less intricately constructed klismos. Both styles, the light or the heavy, were brought back during the Classicist period. The klismos chair is seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular forms of profound individuality around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be followed as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of drawings and artworks has been preserved, with images of the interiors and outside of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an astonishing similarity to representations of previous chairs.
As in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is designed both with and without arms although always having the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one kind, though, the stiles were delicately curved on top of the arms to conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a chairback). Together, all three limbs were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of the Chinese back splat later had a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could merely to a particular limit support corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top that off) indicate a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs probably were kept only for older persons, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resultant effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and decorative issues are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been joined together by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and locked into 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. Artworks project a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same time, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be found in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type of chair may also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by 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 forms—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation 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 tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of rather thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more upmarket examples would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles over 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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