The History of the Chair
Of all furniture items, the chair may be of most importance. While many other objects (except the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be looked upon here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed kinds including the bench and sofa, which can be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously labeled.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic piece of art; it historically is a symbol of social ranking. In the past royal courts there were social signifiers between having 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/or manager’s chair has risen an indicator of superior position, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on an elevated level.
In its furniture purpose, the chair encompasses a variety of different models. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has developed unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds has changed to fit to differing human desires. From its unique connection with man, the chair lives to its full meaning only when in use. Though it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly regarded by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter require the other. Thus the several parts of the chair are given labels like the parts of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental job of a chair is to support our body, its worth is evaluated generally from how completely it does fulfill this practical function. In the structure of the chair, the builder is limited by particular static laws and principal measurements. Within these limitations, however, the chair builder has large freedom.
The history of the chair covered dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that made significant chair forms, expressive of the highest craft in the spheres of handling and creativity. In such civilisations, a 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful scheme, are today a finding from tomb discoveries. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have had four legs crafted not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular structure was created. There appears to be no significant variation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The main variation was in the level of ornamentation, in the selection of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was developed as an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this stool stayed around until much later periods. But the stool then was created for the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats were worked with wood. The easy build of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, reappears but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of these is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient fossil still around but as in a trove of pictorial objects. The better known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those could be seen. These curved legs were probably created out of bent wood and were as such bore great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very stable and were particularly drawn.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; existing casts of seated Romans display evidence of a denser and apparently kind of more crudely crafted klismos. Both types, the light and the heavy, were popularised within the Classicist time. The klismos design can be seen in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special types of marked originality within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be tracked as far as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full serial of images and artworks was preserved, detailing the interior and exterior of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing familiarity to images of ancient chairs.
As in Egypt, there were two particular chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is seen both with and without arms although always with a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles could be slightly curved on top of the arms to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). Together, all three areas had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of the Chinese back splat then had an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden members that merely to a particular extent stabilise corner joints (as well as being loose as a result) indicate a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs most likely were reserved for senior individuals, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It does not differ very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of both furniture forms is stylized. The construction and aesthetic parts are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the way that the individual members do not seem to have been fixed together by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised with 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 had its mark on the chair. Artworks project a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same era, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is displayed in engravings of interiors of wealthy 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 may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of quite thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket examples would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the preference 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 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 versions 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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