Out of all furniture pieces, the chair could be of the most importance. While most of the other objects (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be regarded here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to further makes for example a bench and sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently labeled.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support or an aesthetic piece of art; it historically was an indicator of social rank. Within the historical royal courts there were significant distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. In the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has risen an indicator of superior status, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In its furniture construction, the chair encompasses a variety of various makes. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position 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 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has designated unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms have been evolved to conform to changing human uses. From its unique link with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when used. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly tested by a person using it, for chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the individual elements of the chair are named like the parts of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental purpose of the chair is to support your body, its credit is judged primarily on how fully it does measure up to this practical job. Within the creation of the chair, the chair maker is limited by the static rules and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that had made significant chair forms, as expressions of the principal task in the industries of skill and aesthetics. Out of these such 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of careful design, are a finding from findings made in tombs. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs crafted akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular construction was obtained. There was in our knowledge no noteworthy change in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary people. The main variation existed in the brand of ornamentation, in the selection of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted for an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool the stool continued til much later days. But the stool also then was designed as the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from evidence be seen, from as early as 1366 57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats are worked from wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, was then seen at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this type is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, seen at Guldh j (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient specimen still in form but as found in a wealth of pictorial material. The better recognised is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those would be visible. These unusual legs were thought to have been crafted with bent wood and were thus had huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very durable and were overtly denoted.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; evidence of models of seated Romans show evidence of a more heavyset and which appear to be a rather more crudely crafted klismos. Both features, light and heavy, were brought back in the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some special brands of notable individuality of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China cannot be charted as far back as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618 907) an unbroken series of images and artworks has been preserved, detailing the interior and outer parts of Chinese households and the furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are some chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting similarity to representations of ancient chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there were two iconic chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been constructed both with and without arms however never without a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles had been marginally curved on top of the arms to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). Together, all three limbs had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of the Chinese back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden members that merely to a limited limit embolden corner joints (as well as being loose as a result) indicate a design signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs likely were kept for the senior individuals in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is elegantly fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decoration elements are combined in a way that is all at once na ve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual parts do not seem to have been fixed together with either glue or screws, but had been mortised into one another and held in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Paintings project a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same period, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is evidenced in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair might also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the style actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style that was, as progressed in Paris around 1750 disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally 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 strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of fairly thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and finer chairs would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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 well-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 styles 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 Eug ne Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaud 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 M tro.
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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