From each of the furniture objects, the chair could be of the most importance. While many other items (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair should be said here in the general sense, from stool to throne to derivative pieces such as a bench and sofa, which might be regarded 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 curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support and an aesthetic object; it historically was symbolic of social status. Within the historical royal courts there were important connotations between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. Since the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has become an indicator of superior dignity, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised platform.
As a furniture creation, the chair is utilised for a number of various models. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has developed special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes has been adapted to match to growing human desires. From its significant link with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when in employ. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and tested with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter require each other. Thus the several limbs of a chair are labeled likened to the areas of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple work of a chair is to support our body, its credit is evaluated generally on how completely it does measure up to this practical purpose. In the build of a chair, the builder is bound for the static rules and principal measurements. Inside these boundaries, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an epoch of several thousand years. There existed cultures that have created significant chair types, expressions of the principal object in the industries of craft and aesthetics. Out of these such civilisations, individual 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 construct of expert scheme, are now a finding from findings made in tombs. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have had four legs designed similar to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular construction was created. There was in our understanding no significant difference from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The general change existed in the brand of ornamentation, in the selection of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was developed as an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the type continued for much later days. But the stool also existed in the task of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were formed from wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, appeared at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this form is the folding stool, from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient specimen still existing but as found in a wealth of pictorial material. The best recognised is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs could be visible. These odd legs were likely to have been crafted from bent wood and were in that case needed to bear extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely stable and were overtly signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; evidence of statues of seated Romans display examples of a heavier and are a kind of less intricately crafted klismos. Both styles, the light and heavy, were seen again within the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some brands of notable individuality around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as long as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of images and works of art had been kept safe, with images of the insides and outside of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting similarity to representations of previous chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was constructed both with and without arms though always having its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one form, it has been seen, the stiles are marginally curved above the arms so as to conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). Together, all three limbs were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of a back splat exercised an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could only to a particular ability support corner joints (and were loose to top it off) represent a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited texture. 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 habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs probably were allowed only for senior persons in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of these furniture designs is stylized. The structure and aesthetic elements are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the fact that the individual parts do not appear to have been affixed by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Artworks project a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related 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, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is displayed in engravings of the interiors of wealthy 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 can also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself with its shapely proportions and fine 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 styles—that was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model 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 tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of quite thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and finer chairs would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the favourite 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 popular 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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