Out of each of the furniture items, the chair may be paramount. While the majority of other pieces (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be said here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to developed forms for example the bench and sofa, which can be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece; it historically was an indicator of social place. Within the Medieval royal courts there were significant distinctions between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. In the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as a signifier of superior position, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated level.
As its furniture construction, the chair encompasses a range of variations. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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 make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has demanded particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds have adapted to suit to different human needs. For its close association with man, the chair appears to its full advantage only when in employ. Although it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and tested with a person using it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the several elements of the chair were named likened to the elements of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple purpose of the chair is to support a body, its value is valued basically on how completely it does fulfill this practical purpose. Within the creation of a chair, the chair maker is limited in particular static regulation and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covered a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that have created individual chair shapes, as seen of the leading craft in the arenas of craft and creativity. Out of those 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of careful scheme, are found from discoveries made in tombs. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs shaped similar to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular form was made. There was in our view no particular differentiation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary people. The real change lied in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the evidence of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted for an easily portable seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the type persisted til much later periods. But the stool then also existed in the use of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today be observed, 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 are made in the structure of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats are created of wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, came up 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 from ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient object still extant but seen in a variety of pictorial evidence. The best recognised is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs could be seen. These creative legs were most likely to have been crafted of bent wood and were thus put under great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely durable and were visibly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; a number of models of seated Romans offer examples of a thicker and apparently kind of crudely constructed klismos. Both styles, the light or heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist time. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some special brands of notable uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China cannot be charted as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of sketches and artworks had been kept, showing the inside and exteriors of Chinese houses and the furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an intriguing similarity to images of older chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is seen both with or without arms however always having the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one kind, however, the stiles could be slightly curved by the arms so as to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). Each of the three parts had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of the back splat then had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that just to a limited ability embolden corner joints (and furthermore are loose additionally) signify an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much pressure 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 the senior people, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The construction and aesthetic aspects are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been joined together by either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art display a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same period, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is found in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of 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 of styles—that is, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of relatively thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and finer examples would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished 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 popular 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 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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