The History of the Chair
From each of the furniture needs, the chair might be primary. While most of the other pieces (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair must be used here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to further forms such as the bench or sofa, which can be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly definitive.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic object; it can also be a signifier of social standing. At the past royal courts there were significant signifiers between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to squat on a stool. From the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior status, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised platform.
In its furniture purpose, the chair ranges from a number of different forms. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has developed unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair forms has been evolved to match to changing human needs. From its unique link with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when in employ. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really understood and judged with a person using it, for chair and sitter need one another. Thus the various limbs of a chair were given labels like the names of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first purpose of your chair is to support a human body, its worth is tested generally for how completely it does measure up to this practical purpose. Within the design of a chair, the designer is restricted in the static laws and principal measurements. Through these regulations, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair was dates of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that have created distinctive chair shapes, as expressions of the topmost task in the spheres of handling and creativity. Among those cultures, a 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of careful scheme, are a finding from findings made in tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs formed akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular construction was obtained. There was to our understanding no noteworthy variation in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common peasantry. The only variation exists in the brand of ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed to be an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that type continued until much later periods of time. But the stool then also was made as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original job as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be found, 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 are constructed in the structure of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were formed from wood. The simple make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then came again but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of those is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient specimen still extant but found in a trove of pictorial items. The iconic kind is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those can be displayed. These odd legs were most likely to have been created out of bent wood and were likely to have been had to bear huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very durable and were visibly denoted.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; evidence of models of seated Romans show designs of a denser and in appearance rather more crudely crafted klismos. Both designs, the light and the heavy, were revived during the Classicist era. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special kinds of marked originality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of drawings and artworks had been preserved, with images of the inside and exterior of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a collection of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing familiarity to styles of ancient chairs.
Like in Egypt, there existed two particular chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was found both with and without arms however never missing a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, it must be said, the stiles were delicately curved over the arms so as to sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the back). All three parts were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of this back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would only to a limited limit stabilise corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top that off) signify an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs likely were allowed only for the senior individuals in the family, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is delicately held 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 understanding the overall effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decoration parts are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been constructed by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and fixed in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Works of art display a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same period, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is evidenced in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair is also seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of 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 developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of relatively thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more upmarket designs might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and won favour in many 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
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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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