The History of the Chair
Out of all furniture objects, the chair might be paramount. While most other pieces (apart from the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair was viewed here in the common sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs such as a 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 distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and/or aesthetic item; it is historically symbolic of social rank. Within the past royal courts there were significant differences between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to use a stool. Since the last century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been an identifier of superior standing, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised level.
As a furniture form, the chair can be employed for a range of variations. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs 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. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has designated special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms has perfected to fit to growing human uses. From its close link with man, the chair appears to its full purpose only when in use. Though it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen and evaluated by a person using it, for chair and sitter require one another. Thus the different parts of a chair were given labels according to the elements of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first purpose of a chair is to support a body, its value is evaluated firstly for how fully it does measure up to this practical purpose. In the creation of the chair, the carpenter is limited within certain static legislation and principal measurements. Under these limitations, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair covers dates of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that held distinctive chair forms, as expressive of the foremost craft in the areas of skill and art. Among such cultures, a mention 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 items of skilled scheme, were found from tombs. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs structured akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular form was made. There was from our view no marked difference between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The simple change lied in the brand of ornamentation, in the choice of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was created as an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this kind continued during much later points in time. But the stool also then took on the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are worked out of wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen again at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this kind 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 seen not in any ancient fossil still in form but as found in a large amount of pictorial evidence. The iconic kind is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which can be displayed. These curving legs were understood to have been manufactured in bent wood and were probably had a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super stable and were clearly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; a number of casts of seated Romans show chairs of a denser and in appearance rather crudely designed klismos. Both styles, light or heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist era. The klismos influence is evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular forms of marked originality of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be tracked as far back as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of images and paintings was kept, showing the insides and exterior of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing likeness to images of previous chairs.
As in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair can be found both with and without arms although never without the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one design, it has been seen, the stiles are marginally curved by the arms so as to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Each of the three parts had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of the back splat exercised an inspiration for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would merely to a particular ability embolden corner joints (and then are loose in the bargain) signify an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs most likely were reserved for elderly family members, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly fixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is more often than not designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The structure and aesthetic issues are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual items do not appear to have been joined together by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and locked into its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Paintings display a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same time, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be found in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain that the form actually originated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that was, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of fairly thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more expensive designs might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popular 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 popular 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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