From each of the furniture needs, the chair could be the imperative one. While most other forms (save for the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair should be viewed here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to developed types like a bench or sofa, which may be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic object; it is also an indicator of social standing. From the old royal courts there were clear signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to use a stool. Since the 20th century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as iconic of superior dignity, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
In its furniture creation, the chair encompasses a wealth of various purposes. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the past there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms has evolved to conform to changing human uses. From its unique association with man, the chair appears to its full purpose only when in employ. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood best and fairly evaluated by a person using it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the several elements of the chair have been named likened to the names of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple job of the chair is to support our human body, its worth is judged principally from how fully it fulfills this practical use. Within the construction of the chair, the builder is restricted with some static legislation and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair builder has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair is an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that had distinctive chair types, expressive of the leading task in the industries of craft and creativity. Among such civilisations, particular mention 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of masterful design, are today a finding from findings made in tombs. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have had four legs designed akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular form was made. There appeared to be no noteworthy variation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The only change was in the level of ornamentation, in the evidence of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was created for an easily stored seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that type existed during much later times. But the stool also was created as the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are created out of wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, is seen again somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of those is the folding stool, made from ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient specimen still in form but in a wealth of pictorial material. The best recognised is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those were displayed. These creative legs were considered to have been crafted of bent wood and were in that case needed to bear a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super stable and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans embued the Greek style; a number of models of seated Romans are examples of a more heavyset and in appearance somewhat more crudely built klismos. Both kinds, light and heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist period. The klismos chair can be evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some special types of marked iconicism around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as well as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of sketches and works of art was kept safe, showing the inside and outer parts of Chinese homes and their furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing similarity to pictures of ancient chairs.
Like in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be seen both with and without arms however always having its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one style, though, the stiles could be lightly curved on top of the arms to sit correctly with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its chairback). Together, the three parts are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of a back splat then had a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a restricted ability support corner joints (and then are loose as a result) signify a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs probably were reserved for the senior individuals in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual parts do not look to have been adjoined by use of either glue or screws, but have been mortised into 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 signature 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 in the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same time, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be evidenced in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair might also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the form actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of 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 style—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike practices in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket chairs would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and won favour 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
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 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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