From all the furniture items, the chair could be the primary one. While the majority of other items (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is meant to be said here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs including a bench and sofa, which should be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece; it historically was semiotic of social place. At the past royal courts there were clear signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. From the past century, the director’s or manager’s chair has become iconic of superior rank, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher platform.
In its furniture creation, the chair is utilised for a range of various purposes. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (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, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has derived unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds has adapted to match to changing human uses. From its particular connection with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when used. Whereas it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there are things inside or not, a chair is understood best and fairly tested by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the several elements of a chair were named corresponding to the areas of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary work of your chair is to support the body, its worth is judged basically on how fully it fulfills this practical function. In the manufacture of a chair, the carpenter is restricted for some static regulation and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over dates of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that have created unique chair shapes, as expressions of the principal craft in the spheres of craft and art. Among these peoples, special note must 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 findings made in tombs. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs formed similar to those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular structure was made. There seems to be no notable change between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The simple variation existed in the level of ornamentation, in the evidence of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was designed to be an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the chair stayed around during much later points. But the stool then also was made as the character of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the form of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats were worked from wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then came up some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this form is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient object still in form but in a wealth of pictorial items. The archetype is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which are visible. These curved legs were considered to be crafted of bent wood and were therefore bore great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely durable and were particularly denoted.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; designs of models of seated Romans are chairs of a denser and in appearance kind of crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist era. The klismos influence is used in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special types of profound originality within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as well as that of Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed series of drawings and works of art had been preserved, with images of the interiors and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing likeness to representations of ancient chairs.
Like in Egypt, there were two standard chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been designed both with and without arms although never missing its square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, however, the stiles are lightly curved by the arms so as to conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a chairback). Together, all three parts were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of this back splat then had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could only to a limited limit stabilise corner joints (and furthermore were loose to top that off) signify a design signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—references as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs probably were kept only for the senior individuals, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily joined 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 point of view the overall effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The manufacture and decorative aspects are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been constructed by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and locked into position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Works of art show a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same period, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is found 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 design of chair can also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not held that the style actually began in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat adheres 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 over the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of rather thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more upmarket items may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 commonly known 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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