From all the furniture forms, the chair could be primary. While many other objects (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair should be viewed here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds including a bench or sofa, which can be considered 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 intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or aesthetic object; it can also be a signifier of social placement. In the past royal courts there were plain distinctions between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. From the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as an indicator of superior status, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In a furniture construction, the chair is used for a number of various purposes. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the olden days there were chairs to be born in (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 can make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has developed particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms has been changed to fit to evolving human needs. For its unique importance with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when being used. Whereas it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is understood and evaluated with a person using it, because chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the various parts of the chair have been labeled likened to the parts of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple role of your chair is to support the body, its credit is judged basically by how well it does measure up to this practical purpose. In the build of the chair, the maker is bound by certain static rules and principal measurements. Inside these rules, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an era of several thousand years. There are civilizations that held iconic chair types, as seen of the principal endeavour in the arenas of craft and creativity. Among these such civilisations, particular 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of careful design, are found from findings made in tombs. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular construction was crafted. There appeared to be no particular differentiation in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The simple change exists in the kind of ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was created as an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool the type stayed around until much later points in time. But the stool then also was designed as the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were formed with wood. The easy make of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, reappears but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient fossil still extant but as seen from a large amount of pictorial items. The most well known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those could be displayed. These strange legs were understood to have been executed from bent wood and were probably put under huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely stable and were plainly signified.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; quite a few casts of seated Romans display examples of a denser and are a slightly less intricately constructed klismos. Both types, the light and the heavy, were seen again in the Classicist era. The klismos influence can be found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in special kinds of profound individuality around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as long as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed folio of images and artworks had been preserved, showing the interior and outside of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing familiarity to designs of past chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there were two iconic chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be constructed both with or without arms however never missing its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one kind, however, the stiles are slightly curved above the arms so as to suit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). Together, all three areas had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of a back splat later had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would merely to a restricted limit support corner joints (and furthermore were loose as well) represent a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and occasionally had a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs most likely were only for senior people in the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin 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 by means of a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of these two furniture items is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic elements are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been fixed by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised on one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Artworks display a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, held 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, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in vast quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself with its harmonious 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 style—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat adheres 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 little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of fairly thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and finer examples can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popularised 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
In 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 styles 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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