Article DetailsThe History of the Chair |
| Date Added: June 27, 2010 05:00:00 PM |
| Author: Laura Lang |
| Category: Business: Trade |
| Out of all furniture objects, the chair could be the primary one. While the majority of other items (save for the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be regarded here in the general sense, from stool to throne to complex items like the bench or sofa, which can be considered 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 intriguing as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and an aesthetic object; it can also be an indicator of social rank. At the old royal courts there were plain differences between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. During the past century, the director's or manager's chair has developed a signifier of superior status, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher level. In its furniture form, the chair is utilised for a range of various models. There are chairs manufactured to match man's age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the past there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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 can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners. Our modern lifestyle has derived unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds have been adapted to fit to evolving human uses. Because of its particular association with man, the chair appears to its full significance only when being used. Though it is irrelevant to one's appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there are items inside or not, a chair is understood best and tested by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the different areas of a chair were labeled like the areas of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat. Because the clear purpose of the chair is to support a body, its value is tested basically for how completely it does fulfill this practical role. Within the creation of a chair, the carpenter is limited in the static regulation and principal measurements. Within these limits, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom. The history of the chair lasted over an epoch of several thousand years. There were peoples that had made significant chair shapes, as expressive of the premier task in the areas of skill and creativity. Among these such civilisations, a note 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI. EgyptTwo ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of skilled craft, are now a finding from tombs. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have had four legs shaped like those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular structure was crafted. There seems to be no noteworthy change in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The general difference exists in the complex ornamentation, in the choice of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was developed for an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that type persevered until much later days. But the stool then also took on the task of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the form of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were created of wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, also appeared but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this form is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen). Greece and RomeThe iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient specimen still in form but found in a wealth of pictorial material. The better recognised is the klismos displayed 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 legs were displayed. These odd legs were most likely to have been manufactured with bent wood and were likely to have been put under a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very stable and were overtly denoted. The Romans embued the Greek design; a number of models of seated Romans display chairs of a heavier and apparently kind of more crudely designed klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were brought back in the Classicist period. The klismos influence can be seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special types of marked individuality around Denmark and Sweden around 1800. ChinaThe progression of the chair in China cannot be traced as well as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of sketches and artworks had been protected, with images of the inside and exterior of Chinese households and the designs of furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing likeness to images of ancient chairs. Just as in Egypt, there existed two particular chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair was designed both with or without arms however always having a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one style, it has been seen, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms in order to sit correctly with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). Together, all three sections had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of this back splat had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only to a restricted extent reinforce corner joints (as well as being loose in the result) are a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to stay 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 period armchairs probably were only for elderly individuals, for they were esteemed greatly. The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decorative aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual items do not seem to have been adjoined with either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle. Spain: 17th centuryThe Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Works of art show a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same time, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair. The Netherlands: 17th centuryA low, square, upholstered design of chair can be evidenced 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 type of chair is also seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large amounts, 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 form asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes. France and England: 17th and 18th centuriesThe French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that was, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits 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 tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs. French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of relatively thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more expensive examples may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery. English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popular in many 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 centuryIn 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. ModernAfter 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future. |
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