The History of the Chair
Of all furniture needs, the chair may be primary. While many other pieces (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair was viewed here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to derivative pieces for example 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 overtly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support or aesthetic creation; it historically was a signifier of social status. In the historical royal courts there were clear differences between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. From the past century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior dignity, as well as in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised level.
In a furniture creation, the chair can be utilised for a number of different models. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has developed unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes have perfected to fit to differing human uses. For its unique link with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when in employ. Whereas it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there are items inside or not, a chair is best seen and clearly evaluated with a person using it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the different limbs of the chair are named as the areas of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental function of a chair is to support the body, its credit is valued generally by how suitably it does fulfill this practical function. Within the manufacture of a chair, the carpenter is bound for the static law and principal measurements. Through these restrictions, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasted a period of several thousand years. There existed peoples that had significant chair shapes, expressions of the premier endeavour in the arenas of skill and art. Out of these societies, special 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of careful make, were seen from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs formed not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular form was crafted. There was from our knowledge no notable change in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The main change lies in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was manufactured to be an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool the kind persevered for much later periods of time. But the stool then was created for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are worked with wood. The simplistic build of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then came again some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this type is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient item still around but as found in a trove of pictorial objects. The best recognised is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them would be displayed. These unique legs were most likely to be executed from bent wood and were likely to have been subjected to great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super durable and were plainly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; designs of models of seated Romans display chairs of a denser and in appearance slightly less intricately designed klismos. Both kinds, light and heavy, were popularised during the Classicist era. The klismos style is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special forms of considerable uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as far back as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of images and works of art has been kept, detailing the interior and outer parts of Chinese households and their furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that display an intriguing likeness to images of past chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been designed both with or without arms although never missing its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one form, it must be said, the stiles are marginally curved on top of the arms in order to conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). Together, the three parts are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of a back splat had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only to a particular limit stabilise corner joints (and furthermore were loose in the result) represent a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or has rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs presumably were reserved only for elderly family members, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decorative parts are combined in a style that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been fixed by either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Works of art show a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, in the same time, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is displayed in engravings of interiors 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 design of chair might also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not decided that the form actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by its shapely proportions and fine 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 forms—that was, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of relatively thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more expensive items may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engravings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the preference 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 reknowned 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 products 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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