The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair could be the most imperative. While most of the other pieces (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be used here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to developed items like the bench and sofa, which might be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support and an aesthetic craft; it historically is semiotic of social hierarchy. In the Medieval royal courts there were plain differences between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to make do with a stool. During the recent century, a director’s and manager’s chair has risen an indicator of superior position, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher platform.
As its furniture form, the chair can be used for a range of various makes. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past days there were chairs used for birth (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. There are chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has developed particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds has changed to match to differing human desires. For its particular association with man, the chair appears to its full significance only when being utilised. Although it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is best seen and judged best with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter require one another. Thus the different areas of a chair are given names likened to the names of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary work of a chair is to support our body, its value is evaluated basically on how suitably it measures up to this practical role. In the design of a chair, the maker is restricted under some static laws and principal measurements. Inside these boundaries, however, the chair builder has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over an epoch of several thousand years. There are civilizations that had significant chair forms, as expressions of the foremost object in the areas of craft and creativity. Within these cultures, particular mention 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 structures of skilled make, were found from findings made in tombs. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs formed akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular form was crafted. There was in our understanding no significant difference between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The only change lied in the kind of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was crafted to be an easily stored seat for army. As a camp stool that chair existed during much later points in time. But the stool also was created for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are worked of wood. The simplistic make of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen at some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of those is the folding stool, made from ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient item still in form but as found in a trove of pictorial evidence. The best known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs could be shown. These odd legs were thought to be manufactured of bent wood and were probably subjected to extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super solid and were plainly signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; designs of models of seated Romans show examples of a heavier and in appearance somewhat less intricately constructed klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were seen again in the Classicist era. The klismos influence is seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular brands of notable individuality around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be tracked as far as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of drawings and works of art had been protected, with images of the interior and outer parts of Chinese homes and the furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting resemblance to representations of past chairs.
Like in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair can be constructed both with and without arms however always with a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one image, though, the stiles had been delicately curved on top of the arms to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a back). Together, all three sections are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of the back splat had a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could merely to a particular extent reinforce corner joints (and were loose into the bargain) represent a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs probably were reserved for older people, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of both furniture items is stylized. The construction and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual parts do not appear to have been affixed by either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and fixed in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Works of art display a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair is also seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of 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 was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of leisure 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 tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of relatively thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket chairs can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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 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 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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