The History of the Chair
From all the furniture pieces, the chair could be the primary one. While most of the other items (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair must be regarded here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to complex pieces for example the bench or sofa, which may be regarded 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 simply a physical support and/or an aesthetic creation; it is also an indicator of social status. From the historical royal courts there were important differences between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to make do with a stool. From the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as an indicator of superior dignity, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised platform.
As a furniture creation, the chair can be employed for a range of various models. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms have been evolved to conform to changing human requirements. Due to its unique association with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when being utilised. Whereas it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly regarded with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the individual elements of the chair are given labels corresponding to the parts of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental job of your chair is to support our human body, its worth is valued generally from how suitably it fulfills this practical purpose. Within the build of a chair, the carpenter is restricted in certain static laws and principal measurements. In these regulations, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over an epoch of several thousand years. There were cultures that created iconic chair shapes, as expressions of the topmost craft in the spheres of craft and art. From such cultures, special mention 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of careful design, were a finding from tombs. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs crafted not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular form was created. There was to our understanding no noteworthy difference in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The main change lied in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the particulars of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was developed for an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this kind continued until much later times. But the stool then also was designed as the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence 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 are constructed in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were created with wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen again some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of those is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient object still around but from a trove of pictorial evidence. The most recognisable is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them are visible. These curving legs were most likely created from bent wood and were as such subjected to great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super durable and were particularly denoted.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; quite a few casts of seated Romans show evidence of a denser and are a kind of crudely built klismos. Both styles, light or heavy, were brought back during the Classicist period. The klismos chair is known in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some forms of marked uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be charted as far back as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of sketches and artworks was preserved, showing the interior and exteriors of Chinese homes and their furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting likeness to images of past chairs.
Same as in Egypt, two chair forms dominated in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This chair was constructed both with or without arms although never missing the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, it has been found, the stiles could be delicately curved by the arms in order to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). Each of the three sections had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of a back splat later had an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only to a limited extent stabilise corner joints (and furthermore were loose to top it off) are an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs probably were reserved for elderly individuals, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual parts do not look to have been put together by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and fixed in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Works of art project a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be displayed in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the style actually began in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with its elegant proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are made from wood of relatively thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and finer examples can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through 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
Within 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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