From each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be the paramount one. While most of the other items (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is looked upon here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to further chairs like a bench or sofa, which may be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic creation; it historically is a signifier of social placement. In the Medieval royal courts there were significant distinctions between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to cope with a stool. From the last century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen an indicator of superior rank, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised level.
As its furniture purpose, the chair can be employed for a variety of various forms. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We make 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.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes has changed to match to evolving human uses. Due to its unique link with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when being utilised. Though it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly tested with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the several parts of a chair are named as the areas of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear function of your chair is to support the body, its value is valued generally by how suitably it does measure up to this practical job. In the build of the chair, the maker is bound in particular static rules and principal measurements. Through these regulations, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an era of several thousand years. There were societies that held unique chair forms, as expressive of the leading work in the spheres of skill and aesthetics. Among these such societies, individual mention 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 result of expert design, are now found from tomb findings. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs crafted as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular structure was made. There was to our understanding no noteworthy change from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular peasantry. The only change existed in the brand of ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was designed to be an easily packed seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this type persevered for much later times. But the stool then also was designed as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can already be observed, 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 made in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are made of 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 secured between them, appeared some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient fossil still in form but seen in a variety of pictorial objects. The best recognised is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them can be displayed. These strange legs were likely to have been manufactured from bent wood and were likely to have been subjected to huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely strong and were particularly drawn.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; some statues of seated Romans display examples of a heavier and are a kind of less intricately designed klismos. Both designs, light and heavy, were seen again in the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair can be seen in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of profound originality within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be charted as far back as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of images and works of art has been kept, showing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a collection of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting familiarity to pictures of ancient chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been constructed both with or without arms but always with a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one type, however, the stiles had been marginally curved on top of the arms for the purpose of conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). Together, the three sections had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of the back splat had a foundation for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could merely to a limited ability stabilise corner joints (and are loose as well) represent a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs most likely were reserved only for senior individuals in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic elements are combined in a style that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the fact that the individual items do not appear to have been fixed together by use of either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and locked into position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Paintings show a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same period, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the interiors 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 type of chair might also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the innovation actually originated in The Netherlands. Generally, 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 unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in vast numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant proportions and delicate 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 forms—that is, as created 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 relaxation and charm. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of fairly thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket chairs can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over 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 commonly known 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 versions 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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