The History of the Chair
From each of the furniture pieces, the chair could be of the most importance. While many other items (save for the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is regarded here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to developed forms for example the bench and sofa, which can be viewed 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 interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support or aesthetic piece; it was historically a signifier of social status. Within the past royal courts there were plain signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to sit on a stool. Since the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has developed a signifier of superior status, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In a furniture creation, the chair encompasses a number of different models. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the past there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We have 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.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has been evolved to suit to different human needs. Due to its particular relationship with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when being utilised. Whereas it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly regarded with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the various limbs of the chair have been given names corresponding to the limbs of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental function of a chair is to support a body, its worth is evaluated generally for how well it measures up to this practical use. In the structure of a chair, the maker is bound with the static regulations and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair is a period of several thousand years. There are peoples that had made distinctive chair forms, as expressions of the highest task in the areas of skill and design. In such cultures, 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 structures of skilled design, are a finding from tomb discoveries. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs formed akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular construction was made. There was to our knowledge no significant variation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The main variation was in the brand of ornamentation, in the particulars of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was developed to be an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that stool stayed until much later days. But the stool also then was designed for the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were made of wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, also appeared but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this form is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient item still extant but from a wealth of pictorial objects. The best recognised is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those were visible. These odd legs were possibly executed out of bent wood and were therefore put under great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super solid and were clearly drawn.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; designs of casts of seated Romans display chairs of a denser and which appear to be a rather less intricately built klismos. Both designs, the light or heavy, were seen again during the Classicist period. The klismos influence is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some forms of considerable iconicism in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be followed as far back as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of drawings and paintings was kept safe, showing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese homes and their furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing resemblance to pictures of previous chairs.
Just like in Egypt, there existed two particular chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been constructed both with or without arms although never without a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one form, however, the stiles had been marginally curved over the arms to conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its chairback). The three limbs were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of the back splat had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that merely to a limited extent support corner joints (as well as being loose to top that off) are a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs presumably were kept only for the senior people, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The structure and decoration aspects are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been held together by either glue or screws, but have been mortised into 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 had its mark on the chair. Works of art display a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same era, held 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 interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the style actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of quite thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more expensive chairs can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the aristocratic 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 commonly known 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 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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