The History of the Chair
Posted on June 26, 2010, under Uncategorized.
Out of each of the furniture objects, the chair may be the paramount one. While most of the other objects (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is regarded here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms like a 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 obviously defined.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic item; it historically is a signifier of social ranking. At the Medieval royal courts there were significant distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to utilise a stool. During the 20th century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as an indicator of superior status, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set floor.
In its furniture form, the chair is used for a variety of various makes. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Contemporary lifestyle has derived particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair kinds have changed to match to growing human desires. Due to its significant relationship with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when being utilised. Though it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly tested by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the individual elements of the chair were named according to the names of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple work of your chair is to support our human body, its worth is valued firstly by how suitably it measures up to this practical job. In the construction of the chair, the builder is limited with particular static laws and principal measurements. Within these limits, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair covers an epoch of several thousand years. There are societies that had unique chair types, expressive of the leading endeavour in the arenas of technique and art. In these such societies, a mention needs to 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 items of careful design, are now found from tombs. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs crafted not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular form was created. There seems to be no notable change between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The real difference exists in the type of ornamentation, in the selection of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was made for an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the chair stayed around for much later periods of time. But the stool then also was made as the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the construction of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats were worked with wood. The easy construction of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then came up but some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient fossil still in form but found in a wealth of pictorial objects. The best known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs were visible. These creative legs were possibly crafted out of bent wood and were therefore bore extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super strong and were overtly indicated.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; existing casts of seated Romans are chairs of a thicker and apparently slightly less intricately built klismos. Both kinds, the light and the heavy, were popularised during the Classicist epoch. The klismos style can be evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in particular forms of marked originality of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be tracked as well as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of drawings and paintings was preserved, detailing the interiors and outside of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a collection of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an amazing likeness to designs of older chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there were two standard chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been seen both with and without arms however never missing its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one style, however, the stiles are slightly curved over the arms in order to suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Together, the three areas were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of the Chinese back splat had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that just to a particular capability reinforce corner joints (and furthermore are loose additionally) are a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and occasionally had a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs probably were reserved for older persons, for they were held in great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resulting effect of both furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been put together by either glue or screws, but had been mortised onto one another and fixed in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Paintings display a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same time, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be found in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair can also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself with its shapely 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 is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. 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 achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of fairly thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more upmarket designs may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs of 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 over most of France and was popularised 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
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 brands 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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