The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair may be of the most importance. While the majority of other pieces (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is intended to be viewed here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds like a bench and sofa, which may be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or aesthetic item; it was also a signifier of social place. From the old royal courts there were plain signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to squat on a stool. From the past century, a director’s or manager’s chair has developed an identifier of superior rank, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher level.
As a furniture form, the chair can be used for a wealth of different purposes. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the past there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has designated unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms have evolved to fit to evolving human desires. From its particular link with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when used. Though it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is really understood and regarded best with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter require one another. Thus the several limbs of the chair have been given names as the names of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious function of a chair is to support your body, its credit is judged firstly for how well it does fulfill this practical job. Within the design of the chair, the maker is bound for the static legislation and principal measurements. In these rules, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that had individual chair forms, seen of the leading craft in the spheres of craft and art. In such civilisations, particular 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of skilled design, are found from tomb discoveries. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs formed similar to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular form was created. There seemed to be no noteworthy difference between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular non-royals. The main variation lies in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the selection of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was manufactured for an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this type continued until much later periods. But the stool also then was designed as the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, 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 constructed in the construction of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are made of wood. The easy construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear 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 recognised of these is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient item still extant but as found in a trove of pictorial material. The most well known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those could be displayed. These curving legs were probably executed of bent wood and were thus had a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very stable and were clearly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; a number of casts of seated Romans display designs of a thicker and are a kind of more crudely crafted klismos. Both features, light or heavy, were popularised within the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular types of notable originality around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as far back as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of images and works of art has been preserved, showing the insides and outside of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an intriguing familiarity to styles of ancient chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two standard chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been constructed both with or without arms however always with its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, it has been seen, the stiles were marginally curved above the arms so as to conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). Each of the three parts had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of a back splat later had an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only just to a restricted extent embolden corner joints (and are loose as well) are a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—a left over perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs presumably were reserved only for older persons in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of these two furniture items is stylized. The construction and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual items do not look to have been affixed by either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and held in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Artworks project a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same period, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be found 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. Though this kind of chair may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the form actually originated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of fairly thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more expensive chairs might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the favourite 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 commonly 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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