The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair might be of the most importance. While most of the other items (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair was said here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to further chairs including the bench or sofa, which may be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly definitive.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or aesthetic object; it historically was a symbol of social rank. From the Medieval royal courts there were clear signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. Since the recent century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior rank, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised level.
As its furniture form, the chair is used for a wealth of different purposes. There are chairs structured to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has derived new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair forms have perfected to suit to growing human needs. For its close link with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when being used. Although it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is seen best and clearly evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter need each other. Thus the various limbs of a chair are named like the limbs of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary role of your chair is to support the body, its worth is judged generally on how fully it fulfills this practical role. Within the structure of a chair, the maker is limited for some static regulation and principal measurements. Inside these limitations, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair was an epoch of several thousand years. There are cultures that held unique chair types, seen of the leading endeavour in the areas of handling and design. In these peoples, a 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 items of skilled design, were found from tomb discoveries. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs formed similar to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular design was crafted. There was from our view no marked variation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The only change exists in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was developed as an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool that kind continued during much later days. But the stool then was made for the use of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today 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 were in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were created from wood. The easy make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric held between them, also appeared some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this type is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient fossil still existing but as in a variety of pictorial material. The most well known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which were shown. These unique legs were most likely to have been executed of bent wood and were likely to have been subjected to a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very durable and were overtly pointed out.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; some models of seated Romans show chairs of a more heavyset and apparently rather less intricately constructed klismos. Both styles, the light and heavy, were popularised in the Classicist time. The klismos chair can be found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some particular types of profound originality in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be traced as well as in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of sketches and artworks has been kept safe, showing the interior and exterior of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are some chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an interesting likeness to styles of past chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two particular chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair was constructed both with and without arms however always with a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one type, however, the stiles had been slightly curved by the arms in order to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Together, the three limbs are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of the Chinese back splat later had a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that just to a limited extent reinforce corner joints (and furthermore were loose as well) indicate a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were only for senior people in the family, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration aspects are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the fact that the individual items do not appear to have been adjoined by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and fixed in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Paintings show a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same era, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be evidenced in engravings of 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 style of chair may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of those 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 form—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. 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 covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of relatively thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket items can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. 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; crosshatched cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popular 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
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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