Out of each of the furniture objects, the chair may be the imperative one. While many other objects (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair must be viewed here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to derivative makes including a bench or sofa, which can be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly definitive.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support and an aesthetic creation; it was also an indicator of social placement. Within the historical royal courts there were important differences between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to sit on a stool. During the 20th century, a director’s or manager’s chair has risen iconic of superior status, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In its furniture creation, the chair holds a number of various forms. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has developed special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types has been evolved to fit to changing human requirements. For its particular importance with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when being used. Whereas it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is best seen and fairly tested by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter need the other. Thus the different areas of the chair are labeled as the limbs of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal function of your chair is to support the human body, its worth is evaluated basically for how suitably it measures up to this practical purpose. Within the manufacture of a chair, the designer is bound under particular static rules and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair designer has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasted dates of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that have created distinctive chair types, as expressive of the principal work in the spheres of technique and creativity. Out of these such civilisations, a mention 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 items of expert scheme, were found from tomb findings. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs designed not unlike those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular structure was made. There seems to be no notable variation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The real variation lies in the decorative ornamentation, in the choice of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was designed as an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this kind stayed around for much later days. But the stool also was designed as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats were worked out of wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this form is the folding stool, from ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient specimen still around but as seen in a variety of pictorial items. The archetype is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which could be visible. These creative legs were probably created with bent wood and were therefore needed to bear great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very stable and were overtly signified.
The Romans emulated the Greek designs; designs of casts of seated Romans are chairs of a denser and in appearance slightly more crudely designed klismos. Both designs, the light and heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos style can be found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular types of profound originality within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be tracked as far back as in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of sketches and artworks had been preserved, showing the interior and outer parts of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing likeness to pictures of previous chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was constructed both with and without arms although never without its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one type, though, the stiles had been slightly curved over the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a back). Together, the three areas were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of the back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a restricted capability stabilise corner joints (and then were loose to top it off) indicate an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were allowed only for older family members, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resulting effect of these furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic parts are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not look to have been adjoined by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and held 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. Artworks show a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same time, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair might also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the form actually originated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—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 style owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of quite thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and finer examples can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the favourite 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
Within 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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