The History of the Chair
Out of all furniture pieces, the chair could be the paramount one. While most other items (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is used here in the general sense, from stool to throne to developed forms such as the bench or sofa, which should be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or aesthetic artwork; it is also a symbol of social status. Within the old royal courts there were clear connotations between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to utilise a stool. From the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has become an identifier of superior dignity, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher platform.
In a furniture construction, the chair can be utilised for a variety of various purposes. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the olden days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds have been evolved to conform to evolving human requirements. From its significant connection with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when in use. While it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly tested by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the various parts of a chair are given labels corresponding to the names of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal purpose of a chair is to support a human body, its worth is evaluated firstly by how fully it measures up to this practical purpose. Within the creation of a chair, the maker is restricted with the static rules and principal measurements. Through these limitations, however, the chair builder has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair covered dates of several thousand years. There existed cultures that made individual chair types, as seen of the highest endeavour in the spheres of technique and design. Within these such peoples, special 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of expert scheme, are now a finding from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs shaped not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this design a stable triangular structure was crafted. There seemed to be no noteworthy variation between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The main change existed in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the choice of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was made to be an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool that type persisted during much later days. But the stool then also was designed as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are worked of wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, was seen again but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient item still existing but seen in a variety of pictorial objects. The most well known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs were visible. These unusual legs were presumed to have been executed of bent wood and were thus needed to bear extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very solid and were particularly indicated.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; evidence of casts of seated Romans show evidence of a thicker and which appear to be a rather less delicately designed klismos. Both types, the light and heavy, were revived during the Classicist time. The klismos chair can be found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special types of profound iconicism in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as long as that of Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of drawings and works of art has been preserved, showing the insides and exteriors of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing similarity to images of previous chairs.
Just as in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is found both with and without arms though always having the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, it must be said, the stiles could be delicately curved above the arms for the purpose of sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). Together, all three limbs had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the style of this back splat then had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only just to a restricted extent stabilise corner joints (and then are loose in the bargain) indicate a design signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—references as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs likely were reserved only for older family members, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The construction and decoration parts are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not look to have been put together by either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Artworks display a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same time, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be displayed in engravings of the inside 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 style of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, 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 clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and delicate 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 forms—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of comfort 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 small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and finer designs might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popularised 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 popular 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 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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