From all the furniture needs, the chair might be the imperative one. While the majority of other objects (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be viewed here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to derivative types like a bench and sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly defined.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support or an aesthetic object; it is also semiotic of social placement. In the old royal courts there were social signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to sit on a stool. In the recent century, the director’s and manager’s chair has developed a symbol of superior dignity, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In a furniture form, the chair can be utilised for a range of variations. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs 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. We can make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has developed special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has been adapted to fit to changing human needs. Due to its unique connection with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when being used. Though it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is understood best and fairly tested with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the different parts of a chair have been named corresponding to the parts of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original job of a chair is to support our human body, its worth is evaluated firstly by how well it does fulfill this practical use. In the structure of the chair, the designer is limited in some static regulation and principal measurements. Inside these limitations, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an era of several thousand years. There are peoples that created unique chair shapes, as expressive of the principal task in the industries of technique and art. From such cultures, a note needs to 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 careful design, are today found from tomb discoveries. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have had four legs structured like those of some animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular structure was crafted. There was to all appearances no significant difference in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular non-royals. The simple variation exists in the kind of ornamentation, in the evidence of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was developed as an easily packed seat for army. As a camp stool this type continued during much later times. But the stool also then was designed as the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be found, 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 in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were made from wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then appeared at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of those is the folding stool, made of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient item still existing but in a large amount of pictorial objects. The better recognised is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them can be shown. These creative legs were understood to be executed in bent wood and were likely to have been needed to bear great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very strong and were visibly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; designs of models of seated Romans are examples of a heavier and in appearance kind of less delicately designed klismos. Both styles, the light or heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist era. The klismos chair can be found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some kinds of considerable originality around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be traced as long as that of Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of sketches and artworks had been protected, with images of the interior and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing resemblance to representations of ancient chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two iconic chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be constructed both with or without arms but never missing a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one kind, though, the stiles could be delicately curved by the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Each of the three areas are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the design of the back splat exercised an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could merely to a restricted extent reinforce corner joints (and furthermore were loose as well) are a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs presumably were allowed only for older members of the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so 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 more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of both furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual parts do not seem to have been joined together by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Artworks project a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same period, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be displayed in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair can also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of 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 of styles—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and finer items can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all of the 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 design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popular 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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