Of all furniture objects, the chair could be paramount. While many other pieces (except the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be said here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further kinds for example the bench and sofa, which should be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently definitive.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or an aesthetic craft; it was also a signifier of social placement. Within the old royal courts there were clear differences between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to sit on a stool. In the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has become a symbol of superior dignity, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised platform.
As a furniture form, the chair is used for a variety of different makes. There are chairs manufactured to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (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. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair types have evolved to suit to evolving human desires. From its unique link with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when being used. Whereas it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood and evaluated by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the several limbs of a chair were given names like the areas of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original purpose of the chair is to support the human body, its credit is valued primarily by how completely it does fulfill this practical role. In the construction of a chair, the maker is bound by some static rules and principal measurements. Within these limits, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that had made distinctive chair shapes, expressions of the foremost work in the arenas of technique and design. Within these civilisations, a note 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of masterful design, are known from findings made in tombs. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs designed akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular structure was obtained. There seemed to be no significant change in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The general change lied in the decorative ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was developed to be an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool this kind persevered during much later periods. But the stool then was made as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can already be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are made out of wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, also appeared but some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this type is the folding stool, of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient fossil still existing but as seen in a variety of pictorial evidence. The better known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs would be visible. These odd legs were most likely to have been created of bent wood and were in that case put under 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 visibly drawn.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; existing models of seated Romans offer designs of a heavier and in appearance kind of crudely built klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some special brands of profound uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China cannot be tracked as long as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of sketches and works of art had been protected, with images of the interior and outside of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting likeness to designs of ancient chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there existed two particular chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been seen both with and without arms though never without the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one form, however, the stiles were slightly curved on top of the arms so as to sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). Together, the three areas were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of the Chinese back splat then had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would only to a particular ability stabilise corner joints (and then are loose to top that off) represent an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; when too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs likely were allowed only for older family members, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic parts are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been constructed by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Paintings show a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same era, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is seen in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type of chair might also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself with its elegant proportions and fine 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 brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat suits 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 small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of quite thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more expensive examples can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles through 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 popular 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 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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