Out of each of the furniture forms, the chair might be the primary one. While most of the other items (save for the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair can be viewed here in the general sense, from stool to throne to derivative items such as the bench and sofa, which may be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly defined.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece of art; it is also an indicator of social status. From the past royal courts there were clear connotations between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to use a stool. During the 20th century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as an indicator of superior status, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised level.
As a furniture construction, the chair is employed for a variety of variations. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has developed unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair kinds have changed to suit to changing human requirements. Because of its particular association with man, the chair comes to its full significance only when used. Though it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is understood and clearly evaluated with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the individual areas of the chair were given names according to the parts of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear function of your chair is to support a body, its value is judged principally by how suitably it measures up to this practical job. In the creation of a chair, the builder is limited by the static laws and principal measurements. Under these limits, however, the chair creator has great freedom.
The history of the chair was a period of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that have created individual chair forms, as expressive of the principal endeavour in the spheres of handling and aesthetics. Among these such societies, individual note 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of skilled make, are now seen from tomb findings. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair has four legs crafted as akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular construction was crafted. There was from our view no particular difference from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The real variation lied in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was developed for an easily packed seat for officers. As a camp stool this stool stayed around for much later days. But the stool then took on the role of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool being forgotten. This can today be found, 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 shape of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats were formed out of wood. The simple make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric set between them, came again somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this kind is the folding stool, made of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient specimen still around but seen in a trove of pictorial evidence. The better known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them could be displayed. These unique legs were understood to be crafted from bent wood and were therefore needed to bear great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super solid and were plainly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; some statues of seated Romans offer examples of a more heavyset and in appearance kind of less intricately built klismos. Both styles, light or heavy, were revived within the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of marked individuality within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be charted as far back as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of sketches and paintings had been protected, showing the inside and exteriors of Chinese houses and their furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a number of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an astonishing likeness to pictures of ancient chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there were two particular chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been seen both with and without arms but always having its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one kind, it has been found, the stiles could be delicately curved by the arms for the purpose of sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the back). Each of the three limbs were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the style of this back splat later had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that just to a particular ability embolden corner joints (and then are loose to top it off) represent a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were kept for older individuals, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of these furniture designs is stylized. The structure and aesthetic elements are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual parts do not appear to have been affixed by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Works of art show a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same time, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is evidenced in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair can also be found in countries in which 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 are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, as brought out in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of quite thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and finer examples may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and found favour 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
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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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