Of all furniture needs, the chair may be the most important. While most other items (save for the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is meant to be said here in the common sense, from stool to throne to further makes such as the 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 evidently distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or an aesthetic craft; it historically was an indicator of social rank. At the Medieval royal courts there were important distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to make do with a stool. From the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed a symbol of superior dignity, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In a furniture creation, the chair ranges from a number of different forms. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in 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. There are chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair types has evolved to suit to different human uses. Due to its close connection with man, the chair lives to its full meaning only when used. Whereas it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly regarded with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter require one another. Thus the various limbs of a chair have been named likened to the limbs of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear job of your chair is to support our human body, its credit is tested firstly for how fully it measures up to this practical function. Within the design of a chair, the carpenter is limited under particular static rules and principal measurements. In these rules, however, the chair designer has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over dates of several thousand years. There are societies that made unique chair forms, expressive of the leading craft in the industries of craft and creativity. Among such civilisations, special 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of careful scheme, are today seen from discoveries made in tombs. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs structured similar to those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular form was created. There was in our knowledge no significant change in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The main difference lied in the kind of ornamentation, in the selection of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was made as an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool the chair existed til much later periods. But the stool also then was created as the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can already be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were worked with wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then appeared at some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of these is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient specimen still around but found in a variety of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those could be seen. These odd legs were most likely to have been manufactured from bent wood and were probably had to bear a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very solid and were clearly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; some models of seated Romans show chairs of a more heavyset and apparently somewhat more crudely crafted klismos. Both kinds, light or heavy, were brought back during the Classicist period. The klismos style is evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular types of marked originality around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be followed as well as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of images and artworks has been protected, showing the interior and exteriors of Chinese households and the designs of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a collection of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing resemblance to images of ancient chairs.
Like in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been constructed both with and without arms however never without the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, it has been found, the stiles were slightly curved on top of the arms for the purpose of sit right with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the back). Each of the three limbs are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of this back splat had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that merely to a limited limit support corner joints (as well as being loose as a result) are an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and had on occasion a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs likely were reserved only for elderly individuals, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decorative issues are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been adjoined by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and held in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Paintings show 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 the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same period, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is evidenced in engravings of the inside 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 type of chair is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that was, 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 this popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of relatively thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and more expensive chairs may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popular in many 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 reknowned and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
During 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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