Out of each of the furniture forms, the chair could be the primary one. While the majority of other pieces (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair can be viewed here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to complex forms like a bench and sofa, which can be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently definitive.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support or an aesthetic item; it was also a signifier of social placement. At the historical royal courts there were significant differences between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. From the last century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior position, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated floor.
As a furniture creation, the chair encompasses a number of variations. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); during 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. We have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has designated particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds has adapted to suit to changing human needs. For its particular link with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when in employ. Although it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is understood and tested by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the several parts of the chair have been named like the limbs of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple role of a chair is to support the human body, its worth is evaluated principally on how completely it fulfills this practical role. In the manufacture of the chair, the chair maker is bound for certain static rules and principal measurements. Within these limitations, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There are peoples that had unique chair forms, as seen of the foremost task in the spheres of technique and aesthetics. Among these societies, a note 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of masterful make, are found from tomb findings. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs designed similar to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular form was created. There was from our knowledge no significant differentiation between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The simple variation existed in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted to be an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the chair persisted until much later points. But the stool also was created for the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from evidence be seen, 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 constructed in the form of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are made with wood. The easy construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then came up but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this type is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient specimen still in form but from a large amount of pictorial evidence. The iconic kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which could be shown. These unique legs were presumed to be created from bent wood and were therefore needed to bear a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super strong and were plainly pointed out.
The Romans embued the Greek design; some casts of seated Romans are evidence of a heavier and apparently somewhat less intricately constructed klismos. Both kinds, the light and the heavy, were seen again during the Classicist time. The klismos chair is seen in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of notable uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be tracked as far back as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of drawings and artworks was protected, displaying the interior and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting resemblance to styles of ancient chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be found both with or without arms though never without its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to hold up the back. In one image, it must be said, the stiles are slightly curved by the arms in order to conform correctly to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its chairback). The three parts are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of a back splat exercised an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could merely to a restricted capability reinforce corner joints (and were loose as a result) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—a left over perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to hold themselves 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 epoch armchairs probably were reserved only for older family members, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of both furniture items is stylized. The construction and decorative aspects are combined in a style that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual items do not seem to have been put together by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and fixed in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Paintings display 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 the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be displayed 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. While this design of chair is also seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself with 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 is, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of quite thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and finer designs might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and found favour 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 popularised and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
In 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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