The History of the Chair
Out of all furniture objects, the chair may be the paramount one. While most of the other pieces (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair should be said here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to complex chairs such as the bench or sofa, which should be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinguished.
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 craft; it was historically a symbol of social hierarchy. At the Medieval royal courts there were plain differences between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to utilise a stool. During the last century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as an identifier of superior status, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised level.
In its furniture creation, the chair encompasses a wealth of various purposes. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs 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. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has derived particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has been evolved to suit to different human needs. From its close association with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when in employ. Whereas it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen best and tested with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the different elements of the chair are labeled like the elements of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary work of the chair is to support your body, its value is evaluated generally for how completely it does measure up to this practical job. In the manufacture of the chair, the carpenter is bound by certain static regulation and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair builder has large freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over an epoch of several thousand years. There existed societies that held significant chair types, expressive of the topmost object in the areas of skill and creativity. Out of these such cultures, special mention 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of careful design, are now a finding from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs shaped as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular structure was made. There was from our understanding no notable variation in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The simple variation exists in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the evidence of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was developed to be an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool the type existed during much later periods. But the stool also took on the use of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be noted, 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 were in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats are formed out of wood. The simple build of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, appeared somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this type is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient object still in form but as seen from a variety of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which would be shown. These unique legs were likely to be crafted in bent wood and were thus had to bear great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very stable and were plainly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; quite a few models of seated Romans display examples of a denser and are a slightly crudely constructed klismos. Both styles, light and heavy, were popularised within the Classicist time. The klismos design can be seen in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some special types of profound originality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as far back as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of images and artworks was protected, showing the inside and outer parts of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a trove of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting likeness to representations of previous chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be constructed both with and without arms however never missing its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles were marginally curved over the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the back). Each of the three parts had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of this back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that merely to a particular ability embolden corner joints (and then were loose in the result) indicate an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or has rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs presumably were kept for older persons in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decorative parts are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not seem to have been constructed by either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and held in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Paintings show a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same era, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be 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 style of chair can also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not determined that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of fairly thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more expensive designs may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and found favour in many 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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