Out of all furniture objects, the chair may be paramount. While the majority of other items (save for the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair can be viewed here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to complex forms for example the bench and sofa, which might be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or an aesthetic creation; it was also semiotic of social placement. Within the Medieval royal courts there were plain differences between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to cope with a stool. In the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has risen an identifier of superior standing, as well as in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher floor.
As its furniture creation, the chair can be employed for a wealth of various purposes. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and 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.
Modern day living has demanded unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds has been adapted to suit to evolving human requirements. For its unique link with man, the chair appears to its full purpose only when used. While it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is best seen and evaluated by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the individual areas of a chair are given labels according to the names of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental purpose of your chair is to support a human body, its value is judged principally by how fully it fulfills this practical purpose. Within the manufacture of the chair, the carpenter is limited in the static legislation and principal measurements. In these regulations, however, the chair builder has large freedom.
The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that had iconic chair shapes, expressive of the principal endeavour in the areas of technique and aesthetics. In those peoples, individual note 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of skilled make, were a finding from discoveries made in tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs structured similar to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular design was obtained. There was in our view no significant differentiation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The real variation lied in the type of ornamentation, in the evidence of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was developed as an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool that type stayed around until much later points. But the stool then also took on the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed 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’t be folded because the seats are made with wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, can be seen some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of these is the folding stool, of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient object still around but seen in a trove of pictorial objects. The better recognised is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs were visible. These creative legs were considered to be crafted in bent wood and were as such put under huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super stable and were clearly signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; quite a few statues of seated Romans offer chairs of a heavier and apparently kind of less intricately built klismos. Both kinds, light and heavy, were popularised in the Classicist era. The klismos design is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in particular types of notable originality in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far back as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full serial of images and paintings had been kept, showing the interior and exterior of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an amazing familiarity to styles of older chairs.
Just like in Egypt, two fundamental chair forms existed in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is found both with or without arms although always having the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one kind, it must be said, the stiles had been marginally curved on top of the arms in order to sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). Together, the three sections are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of this back splat had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would merely to a limited extent support corner joints (and then were loose as a result) are a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or is given rounded edges—acknowledging perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs likely were kept for elderly individuals, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decoration elements are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not look to have been affixed with either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Artworks display a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same period, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is seen in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the style actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, 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 can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and delicate 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, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat conforms 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 small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of quite thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket chairs might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popularised 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 reknowned and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
During 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 versions 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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