The History of the Chair
Out of all furniture items, the chair may be of the most importance. While most of the other pieces (except the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is meant to be viewed here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further items such as a bench or sofa, which might be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic creation; it historically was a symbol of social placement. Within the Medieval royal courts there were significant differences between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. During the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has risen a symbol of superior dignity, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In a furniture creation, the chair can be used for a number of various forms. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are 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 up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types has perfected to match to evolving human desires. Because of its significant connection with man, the chair lives to its full importance only when being used. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be items inside or not, a chair is seen best and regarded best with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the several areas of a chair have been labeled according to the names of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious function of a chair is to support your body, its credit is judged primarily by how completely it does measure up to this practical purpose. Within the manufacture of the chair, the designer is bound under some static legislation and principal measurements. Within these rules, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covers a period of several thousand years. There are societies that had unique chair forms, seen of the foremost work in the industries of craft and creativity. From these such societies, particular note 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of masterful make, were found from findings made in tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have had four legs crafted akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this design a stable triangular form was made. There was to our understanding no particular difference from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary people. The real change was in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was developed for an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool this kind persevered for much later periods of time. But the stool also then was made as the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can now be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are created from wood. The simplistic make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, is seen again some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient specimen still around but as found in a trove of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs would be displayed. These unique legs were possibly manufactured out of bent wood and were probably needed to bear great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely durable and were overtly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; existing statues of seated Romans show chairs of a denser and which appear to be a somewhat less intricately designed klismos. Both styles, the light and heavy, were seen again during the Classicist era. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special brands of profound uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be traced as far back as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of images and paintings was kept safe, detailing the interior and outside of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a collection of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing similarity to images of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two major chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair can be seen both with or without arms though always with the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one type, though, the stiles were slightly curved by the arms so as to sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). Together, all three sections were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of this back splat had an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that just to a particular capability support corner joints (and then are loose as a result) indicate an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs likely were reserved for the senior people in the family, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and decoration issues are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been put together with either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art project a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during 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 seen in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant 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 was, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat suits to the human body and allows 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 over the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of quite thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and finer items may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popular 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 popularised 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
For a great deal on executive furniture in Melbourne contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Sphere: Related Content