The History of the Chair
Posted in Uncategorized on 06/26/2010 12:32 pm by Arrrr !!!From each of the furniture items, the chair may be the primary one. While the majority of other forms (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair can be looked upon here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to complex types including a bench and sofa, which should be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly definitive.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support or aesthetic piece; it was also semiotic of social rank. Within the past royal courts there were important differences between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. In the recent century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed an indicator of superior position, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated floor.
As its furniture purpose, the chair is used for a variety of different purposes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has derived special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms has perfected to suit to growing human desires. From its close association with man, the chair appears to its full advantage only when used. Though it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and regarded best with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the various limbs of the chair have been given labels likened to the areas of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary purpose of a chair is to support our body, its value is evaluated generally by how well it does measure up to this practical role. Within the manufacture of a chair, the chair maker is restricted under the static regulations and principal measurements. Within these limitations, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair was a period of several thousand years. There existed societies that held iconic chair types, expressions of the leading task in the spheres of handling and creativity. Among these peoples, individual 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 items of skilled make, are now seen from findings made in tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs shaped like those of an animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular form was made. There was to all appearances no particular differentiation in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The simple difference lied in the complexity of ornamentation, in the evidence of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed for an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool the kind persisted for much later days. But the stool then also was designed as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can already be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were created with wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, was seen again some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this type is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient specimen still around but seen in a trove of pictorial material. The archetype is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs would be seen. These unique legs were likely to be created from bent wood and were likely to have been had great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super strong and were clearly drawn.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; evidence of statues of seated Romans show examples of a thicker and in appearance rather more crudely crafted klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were brought back within the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence can be evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special forms of profound uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far back as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of drawings and artworks was preserved, detailing the insides and exterior of Chinese homes and the furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing likeness to pictures of older chairs.
As in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be found both with and without arms though never missing the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, it must be said, the stiles had been slightly curved by the arms to conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the back). Together, all three limbs were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of this back splat exercised an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a restricted ability support corner joints (and then are loose to top that off) indicate a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were only for older persons in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have come to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resultant effect of these furniture items is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic aspects are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been constructed with either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Artworks show a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same period, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen 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 type of chair might also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the style actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely proportions and expensive 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 forms—that was, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and grants 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 on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of rather thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket designs may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and found favour in several 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
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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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