The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair could be the primary one. While most other forms (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be said here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs including the bench or sofa, which might 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 curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or aesthetic piece of art; it can also be a symbol of social placement. Within the old royal courts there were social distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to cope with a stool. Since the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has developed a symbol of superior standing, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
As its furniture purpose, the chair ranges from a wealth of various models. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during 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. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has developed special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds have adapted to fit to growing human uses. Because of its close link with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when utilised. Whereas it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is best seen and fairly judged by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the various parts of the chair were given names according to the parts of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary function of your chair is to support a human body, its value is judged firstly by how suitably it measures up to this practical job. In the creation of a chair, the builder is restricted within the static legislation and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair was a period of several thousand years. There were societies that created distinctive chair shapes, expressions of the leading endeavour in the areas of craft and art. In these such cultures, individual 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 upshot of expert craft, were seen from tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair has four legs structured not unlike those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular construction was made. There was in our understanding no noteworthy difference between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The only variation was in the decorative ornamentation, in the selection of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was developed to be an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool that kind persevered during much later times. But the stool also took on the role of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be noted, 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 shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are created from wood. The simplistic structure of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, is seen somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this type is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient object still in form but seen in a large amount of pictorial objects. The most recognisable is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area by Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which could be visible. These curved legs were most likely executed with bent wood and were therefore subjected to huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very durable and were plainly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; quite a few statues of seated Romans show designs of a more heavyset and are a somewhat crudely designed klismos. Both designs, the light and heavy, were seen again in the Classicist time. The klismos chair can be seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special brands of marked individuality around Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be charted as well as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of sketches and paintings had been kept safe, with images of the interiors and outer parts of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a collection of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an interesting similarity to pictures of older chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair was found both with and without arms although never missing the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, however, the stiles had been marginally curved above the arms to conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). All three limbs are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of the Chinese back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a particular capability support corner joints (as well as being loose as well) indicate a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—acknowledging perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs likely were kept only for elderly individuals in the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is elegantly affixed 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 point of view the overall effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The constructive and decoration issues are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the fact that the individual members do not seem to have been adjoined by either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Artworks display a design 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 small pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair might also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and delicate 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 progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat suits 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 small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of relatively thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and finer examples would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popularised 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 commonly known 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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