The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture items, the chair may be primary. While many other items (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is intended to be viewed here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to developed makes for example the bench and sofa, which should be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or aesthetic creation; it was also symbolic of social hierarchy. Within the Medieval royal courts there were significant distinctions between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to use a stool. In the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as a signifier of superior rank, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher level.
As a furniture purpose, the chair is used for a variety of different forms. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has designated unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds have changed to match to differing human needs. Due to its close connection with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when being utilised. Though it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is best seen and judged best with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the individual parts of the chair are labeled like the names of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original function of the chair is to support your body, its value is judged primarily by how well it fulfills this practical use. Within the construction of a chair, the builder is bound by some static regulations and principal measurements. Inside these restrictions, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an era of several thousand years. There were societies that held unique chair forms, as seen of the highest endeavour in the areas of skill and creativity. Out of these civilisations, individual mention 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of expert scheme, are now seen from discoveries made in tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair has four legs designed as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular structure was created. There was in our knowledge no notable differentiation between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The only change lies in the decorative ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was manufactured to be an easily portable seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this stool persevered til much later points. But the stool then was designed for the character of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can already be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are made with wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric set between them, also appeared at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this form is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient specimen still in form but in a trove of pictorial material. The significant kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs would be seen. These odd legs were understood to have been manufactured of bent wood and were therefore bore a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super stable and were clearly drawn.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; quite a few casts of seated Romans display designs of a heavier and in appearance somewhat more crudely designed klismos. Both styles, light or heavy, were seen again in the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular kinds of notable individuality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be followed as long as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full serial of drawings and artworks has been preserved, displaying the interior and exterior of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing likeness to pictures of previous chairs.
As in Egypt, there existed two particular chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair is constructed both with and without arms but never missing a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to give support to the back. In one image, it has been found, the stiles are delicately curved over the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). All three sections had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of the Chinese back splat exercised an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only just to a limited limit stabilise corner joints (and then were loose to top it off) are a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs probably were kept for the senior individuals in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been affixed by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised into one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Works of art show a type of chair with a relatively brusque 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 from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same time, gave 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 the interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair may also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and grants 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 found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of relatively thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more expensive items can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and won favour 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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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