From each of the furniture needs, the chair might be the most imperative. While the majority of other objects (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be used here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to derivative items for example a bench or sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and an aesthetic item; it historically is a symbol of social hierarchy. In the old royal courts there were significant connotations between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. In the last century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been an identifier of superior dignity, and in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
In its furniture construction, the chair is utilised for a range of different purposes. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since 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 up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has designated particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair forms have been adapted to suit to differing human desires. For its unique importance with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when utilised. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly evaluated with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the different parts of the chair are labeled like the parts of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary work of your chair is to support the human body, its credit is valued generally from how completely it does measure up to this practical function. In the design of the chair, the designer is bound within the static legislation and principal measurements. Under these regulations, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extended over dates of several thousand years. There are societies that have created unique chair shapes, expressive of the premier craft in the industries of craft and design. In such societies, special 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 construct of expert craft, are known from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted similar to those of an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular design was crafted. There was to our knowledge no significant differentiation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The main change exists in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was designed as an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that form persevered during much later times. But the stool then also was designed as the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can already be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the form of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were created of wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, came again some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of these is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient item still existing but as seen in a large amount of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs would be displayed. These unique legs were presumed to have been crafted from bent wood and were as such put under huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very stable and were plainly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; a number of casts of seated Romans display evidence of a denser and apparently slightly less delicately crafted klismos. Both designs, the light and heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some brands of profound originality of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as far back as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken serial of drawings and paintings was protected, displaying the interiors and outer parts of Chinese houses and the furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a trove of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing resemblance to styles of ancient chairs.
As in Egypt, there existed two particular chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair is seen both with and without arms however never without its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one type, it must be said, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms in order to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its back). Together, the three limbs were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the design of the Chinese back splat exercised an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could merely to a restricted extent support corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the result) represent a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs most likely were reserved for older persons, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The constructive and decoration aspects are combined in a style that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been affixed with either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and held in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Artworks project a style 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 show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same time, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is seen in engravings of the interior 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 type of chair can also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the innovation actually originated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant proportions and fine 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 is, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat adheres 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 little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are made from wood of quite thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and finer chairs can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic 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 well-known 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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