Out of each of the furniture objects, the chair might be the primary one. While the majority of other objects (except the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair can be looked upon here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms including a bench and 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 evidently labeled.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support or aesthetic piece of art; it was also a signifier of social place. From the Medieval royal courts there were important connotations between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. During the past century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been iconic of superior position, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated floor.
In a furniture form, the chair encompasses a wealth of different makes. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has demanded new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds have been changed to match to different human uses. Because of its close relationship with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when being used. Though it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and fairly judged with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter require the other. Thus the several elements of the chair have been given labels corresponding to the limbs of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious work of your chair is to support a body, its value is evaluated firstly on how fully it does measure up to this practical purpose. Within the manufacture of a chair, the designer is bound with some static regulation and principal measurements. Within these limits, however, the chair designer has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair covered dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that held distinctive chair forms, as expressions of the topmost endeavour in the arenas of craft and design. Out of these peoples, 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 objects of expert craft, are today a finding from tomb discoveries. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular form was obtained. There was in our understanding no notable variation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The real difference exists in the type of ornamentation, in the choice of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was created to be an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool this stool stayed around until much later periods of time. But the stool also was designed as the character of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from evidence be found, 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 in the form of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were made of wood. The easy build of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, reappeared somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient fossil still existing but in a trove of pictorial material. The best known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those could be visible. These curving legs were thought to have been created in bent wood and were in that case had a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely durable and were plainly signified.
The Romans embued the Greek design; existing casts of seated Romans are chairs of a thicker and apparently kind of less intricately built klismos. Both kinds, the light and the heavy, were seen again in the Classicist era. The klismos influence is known in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular types of marked uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be traced as far back as that of Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of images and paintings has been preserved, showing the interior and exterior of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing similarity to pictures of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been constructed both with and without arms though never without its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, though, the stiles are delicately curved on top of the arms to conform correctly to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a back). Together, all three areas had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of the Chinese back splat later had a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would only to a particular extent support corner joints (and were loose to top that off) indicate an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs most likely were kept only for the senior persons in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decorative aspects are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been adjoined by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised into 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, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, possessed 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 in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not held that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its shapely 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 forms—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat adheres 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 little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more upmarket examples can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and won 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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