The History of the Chair
From each of the furniture forms, the chair may be the most important. While the majority of other items (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is meant to be looked upon here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to developed kinds like the bench or sofa, which may be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support or aesthetic object; it was also an indicator of social status. At the Medieval royal courts there were plain signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. From the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has become a symbol of superior dignity, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher level.
In its furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a variety of various purposes. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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 can make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has developed special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds has adapted to conform to differing human uses. From its significant importance with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when being used. Although it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is best seen and fairly judged by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the various elements of the chair were given labels according to the parts of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the basic role of your chair is to support a body, its credit is tested basically by how fully it does measure up to this practical purpose. In the construction of the chair, the builder is restricted with particular static regulation and principal measurements. Under these boundaries, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over an era of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that created individual chair types, as expressive of the premier endeavour in the areas of skill and creativity. From such societies, special mention should 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 construct of expert scheme, were a finding from tomb discoveries. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs crafted as akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular structure was created. There seemed to be no particular variation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The simple variation exists in the level of ornamentation, in the selection of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was made to be an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool the kind continued during much later periods. But the stool then also was designed for the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were formed with wood. The simplistic build of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, then came up but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this kind is the folding stool, from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient fossil still around but as in a wealth of pictorial items. The better recognised is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them could be shown. These unique legs were considered to have been manufactured out of bent wood and were thus had a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super stable and were visibly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek design; a number of models of seated Romans display chairs of a thicker and are a somewhat less intricately constructed klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were popularised within the Classicist time. The klismos influence is seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of considerable originality around Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as long as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of drawings and artworks had been kept safe, showing the inside and outside of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an intriguing resemblance to representations of previous chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be found both with and without arms however never without its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one image, though, the stiles had been marginally curved on top of the arms so as to suit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the back). Together, all three sections had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of a back splat then had a foundation for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden members that merely to a particular ability reinforce corner joints (and were loose to top it off) indicate a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs presumably were only for senior individuals in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic elements are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual parts do not look to have been fixed by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and fixed in place 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. Paintings show a style 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 bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same time, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is seen in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the style actually originated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that was, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat suits 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 tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are constructed from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and more expensive items can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popularised in several 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
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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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