The History of the Chair
Filed Under Uncategorized
Out of each of the furniture items, the chair might be the most important. While the majority of other items (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair must be said here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms including a bench or sofa, which should be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly definitive.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic item; it historically was semiotic of social rank. In the Medieval royal courts there were clear differences between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. In the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has developed a signifier of superior status, as well as in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated floor.
As a furniture creation, the chair can be utilised for a number of variations. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the past there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (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 have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has developed special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair shapes has been adapted to conform to evolving human desires. For its close importance with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when utilised. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and tested by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter need one another. Thus the several elements of a chair were labeled likened to the areas of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the primary work of your chair is to support your body, its credit is evaluated generally from how suitably it fulfills this practical role. Within the design of a chair, the maker is restricted within the static law and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that had unique chair forms, expressions of the foremost task in the spheres of technique and creativity. Within those civilisations, 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of skilled scheme, were known from tombs. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs shaped akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular form was obtained. There was to our knowledge no noteworthy differentiation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The general difference exists in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was crafted for an easily packed seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that kind stayed until much later points in time. But the stool then was created for the character of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool being forgotten. This can already be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were made from wood. The easy make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, reappeared at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient specimen still existing but seen in a large amount of pictorial objects. The iconic kind is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them would be displayed. These creative legs were most likely to be crafted out of bent wood and were therefore bore a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very solid and were overtly pointed out.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; designs of statues of seated Romans offer examples of a more heavyset and which appear to be a somewhat more crudely designed klismos. Both features, light or heavy, were brought back during the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is known in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in special kinds of notable iconicism around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as long as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of sketches and artworks has been kept safe, with images of the inside and outside of Chinese homes and the furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are some chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing similarity to images of past chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be found both with and without arms though always having its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles had been lightly curved above the arms to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its chairback). Together, the three sections are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of the Chinese back splat then had an introduction for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would only to a particular extent embolden corner joints (and then were loose in the result) are a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs most likely were kept only for older individuals, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The construction and aesthetic elements are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual parts do not look to have been held together by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and fixed in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Artworks project a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same period, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is displayed in engravings of the interior 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 kind of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself with its elegant 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 of forms—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of quite thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more expensive designs might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally 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 most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popularised 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
In 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
For a great deal on office furniture in Melbourne contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Sphere: Related Content