The History of the Chair
From each of the furniture needs, the chair may be of the most importance. While most other forms (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair can be regarded here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to further forms including the bench and sofa, which should be seen 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 exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic artwork; it can also be an indicator of social status. In the past royal courts there were clear differences between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to utilise a stool. From the past century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has become iconic of superior standing, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a higher level.
As its furniture form, the chair encompasses a variety of various models. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design 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.
Our modern lifestyle has derived unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes have changed to fit to growing human requirements. Because of its particular link with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when in use. Whereas it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is understood and judged best by a person using it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the several areas of a chair have been given labels likened to the areas of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental role of the chair is to support a human body, its worth is tested generally by how well it does measure up to this practical role. In the construction of a chair, the builder is bound under the static regulation and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that had individual chair shapes, as seen of the premier work in the areas of craft and creativity. From these societies, individual mention 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of expert craft, were found from tomb discoveries. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs crafted similar to those of an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular construction was crafted. There was in our view no significant variation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The real variation exists in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the evidence of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed to be an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that stool existed for much later points. But the stool then was designed as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can already be seen, 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 are not able to be folded as the seats were made from wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, appeared but somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this kind is the folding stool, made of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient object still existing but as seen from a variety of pictorial evidence. The best known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which are shown. These curved legs were considered to be manufactured from bent wood and were probably had to bear a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super strong and were clearly denoted.
The Romans embued the Greek design; designs of casts of seated Romans offer evidence of a denser and are a somewhat more crudely constructed klismos. Both types, light and heavy, were seen again in the Classicist time. The klismos chair is seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular kinds of profound originality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be charted as far as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of drawings and artworks was protected, detailing the insides and outer parts of Chinese households and the furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing similarity to representations of ancient chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That chair was designed both with or without arms though never missing its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one image, it has been found, the stiles were delicately curved above the arms in order to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a back). Each of the three limbs had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of the Chinese back splat later had an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would merely to a restricted ability reinforce corner joints (and then are loose in the result) signify an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were reserved for older persons, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of both furniture forms is stylized. The construction and aesthetic aspects are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual members do not look to have been put together with either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Works of art show a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same period, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the form actually originated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in vast amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself by its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of relatively thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and finer designs might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the preference 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
For a great deal on office storage in Sydney contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Comments
Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!