The History of the Chair
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Out of all furniture forms, the chair may be the imperative one. While most of the other pieces (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be regarded here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to developed makes such as a bench or sofa, which should be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or aesthetic object; it was also semiotic of social standing. Within the old royal courts there were plain differences between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to sit on a stool. In the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen an indicator of superior dignity, as well as in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised platform.
As a furniture form, the chair encompasses a range of various models. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the olden days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has developed special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair shapes has evolved to suit to evolving human needs. For its close importance with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when in use. Although it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly evaluated with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter require the other. Thus the several areas of a chair are given labels likened to the names of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple purpose of a chair is to support your body, its credit is valued basically for how suitably it measures up to this practical role. Within the design of a chair, the carpenter is restricted under certain static laws and principal measurements. Inside these regulations, however, the chair builder has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair covered a period of several thousand years. There were cultures that held unique chair forms, as expressive of the leading craft in the arenas of technique and creativity. From these such peoples, special mention 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of skilled make, are now known from findings made in tombs. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs shaped akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular form was obtained. There was to all appearances no significant difference from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The real change lied in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the selection of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was designed as an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that form stayed around until much later points in time. But the stool then existed in the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration 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 worked from wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then came again but somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this kind is the folding stool, from ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient object still existing but seen in a trove of pictorial items. The best recognised is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those were seen. These curving legs were understood to have been executed in bent wood and were in that case needed to bear a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super solid and were visibly denoted.
The Romans adopted the Greek design; evidence of models of seated Romans are chairs of a thicker and apparently somewhat less intricately constructed klismos. Both designs, light and heavy, were revived within the Classicist period. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular types of profound iconicism of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as far back as that of Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of drawings and artworks was kept, showing the insides and exterior of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing resemblance to representations of ancient chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be designed both with or without arms though always having its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one design, it must be said, the stiles had been slightly curved above the arms so as to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a chairback). The three parts are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of this back splat exercised an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could merely to a particular capability reinforce corner joints (and are loose in the bargain) signify a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—a left over maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs presumably were reserved for senior members of the family, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The construction and aesthetic issues are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been held together with 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 during the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Works of art show a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same time, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the form actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious 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 was, as brought out in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of relatively thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and finer items can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases 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 spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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 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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