| The chair is of extreme antiquity, although for many
centuries and indeed for thousands of years it was an article of state and
dignity rather than an article of ordinary use. “The chair”
is still extensively used as the emblem of authority in the House of Commons
and in public meetings. It was not, in fact, until the 16th century that
it became common anywhere. The chest, the bench and the stool were until
then the ordinary seats of everyday life, and the number of chairs which
have survived from an earlier date is exceedingly limited; most of such
examples are of ecclesiastical or seigneurial origin. Our knowledge of the
chairs of remote antiquity is derived almost entirely from monuments, sculpture
and paintings. A few actual examples exist in the British Museum, in the
Egyptian museum at Cairo, and elsewhere.
Egyptian chairs
In ancient Egypt chairs appear to have been of great richness and splendour.
Fashioned of ebony and- ivory, or of carved and gilded wood, they were
covered with costly materials and supported upon representations of the
legs of beasts or the figures of captives. An arm-chair in fine preservation
found in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings is astonishingly similar, even
in small details, to that "Empire" style which followed Napoleon’s
campaign in Egypt. The earliest monuments of Nineveh represent a chair
without a back but with tastefully carved legs ending in lions’
claws or bulls’ hoofs. Others are supported by figures in the nature
of caryatides or by animals.
Greek and Roman chairs
The earliest known form of Greek chair, going back to five or six centuries
before Christ, had a back but stood straight up, front and back. On the
frieze of the Parthenon Zeus occupies a square seat with a bar-back and
thick turned legs; it is ornamented with winged sphinxes and the feet
of beasts. The characteristic Roman chairs were of marble, also adorned
with sphinxes. The curule chair was originally very similar in form to
the modern folding chair, but eventually received a good deal of ornament.
The most famous of the very few chairs which have come down from a remote
antiquity is the reputed chair of St. Peter in St Peter's Basilica at
Rome. The wooden portions are much decayed, but it would appear to be
Byzantine work of the 6th century, and to be really an ancient sedia gestatoria.
It has ivory carvings representing the labours of Hercules. A few pieces
of an earlier oaken chair have been let in; the existing one, Gregorovius
says, is of acacia wood. The legend that this was the curdle chair of
the senator Pudens is necessarily apocryphal. It is not, as is popularly
supposed, enclosed in Gian Lorenzo Bernini's bronze chair, but is kept
under triple lock and exhibited only once in a century. Byzantium, like
Greece and Rome, affected the curule form of chair, and in addition to
lions’ heads and winged figures of Victory (or Nike) and dolphin-shaped
arms used also the lyre-back which has been made familiar by the pseudo-classical
revival of the end of the 18th century.
Medieval chairs
seigneurial chairs at a table with tin cutlery, pottery, medieval glass
and earthenware in majolica, c. 1465The chair of Maximian in the cathedral
of Ravenna is believed to date from the middle of the 6th century. It
is of marble, round, with a high back, and is carved in high relief with
figures of saints and scenes from the Gospels—the Annunciation,
the Adoration of the Magi, the flight into Egypt and the baptism of Christ.
The smaller spaces are filled with carvings of animals, birds, flowers
and foliated ornament. Another very ancient seat is the so-called “Chair
of Dagobert” in the Louvre. It is of cast bronze, sharpened with
the chisel and partially gilt; it is of the curule or faldstool type and
supported upon legs terminating in the heads and feet of animals. The
seat, which was probably of leather, has disappeared. Its attribution
depends entirely upon. the statement of Suger, abbot of St Denis in the
12th century, who added a back and arms. Its age has been much discussed,
but Viollet-le-Duc dated it to early Merovingian times, and it may in
any case be taken as the oldest faldstool in existence.
To the same generic type belongs the famous abbots’ chair of Glastonbury;
such chairs might readily be taken to pieces when their owners travelled.
The faldisterium in time acquired arms and a back, while retaining its
folding shape. The most famous, as well as the most, ancient, English
chair is that made at the end of the l3th century for Edward I., in which
most subsequent monarchs have been crowned. It is of an architectural
type and of oak, and was covered with gilded gesso which long since disappeared.
Passing from these historic examples we find the chair monopolized by
the ruler, lay or ecclesiastical, to a comparatively late date. As the
seat of authority it stood at the head of the lord’s table, on his
dais, by the side of his bed. The seigneurial chair, commoner in France
and the Netherlands than in England, is a very interesting type, approximating
in many respects to the episcopal or abbatial throne or stall. It early
acquired a very high back and sometimes had a canopy. Arms were invariable,
and the lower part was closed in with panelled or carved front and sides—the
seat, indeed, was often hinged and sometimes closed with a key.
That we are still said to sit “in” an arm-chair and “on"
other kinds of chairs is a reminiscence of the time when the lord or seigneur
sat “in his chair.” These throne-like seats were always architectural
in character, and as Gothic feeling waned took the distinctive characteristics
of Renaissance work.
Chinese chairs
During Tang dynasty (618 - 907 AD), a remarkable change happened in China.
Higher seats first started to appear amongst the Chinese elite and their
usage soon spread to all levels of society. By the 12th century seating
on the floor was rare in China, unlike in other Asian countries where
the custom continued, and the chair or more commonly the stool was used
in the vast majority of houses throughout the country.
English chairs
Although English furniture derives so extensively from foreign and especially
French and Italian models, the earlier forms of English chairs owed but
little to exotic influences. This was especially the case down to the
end of the Tudor period, after which France began to set her mark upon
the British chair. The squat variety, with heavy and sombre back, carved
like a piece of panelling, gave place to a taller, more slender, and more
elegant form, in which the framework only was carved, and attempts were
made at ornament in new directions. The stretcher especially offered opportunities
which were not lost upon the cabinet-makers of the Restoration. From a
mere uncompromising cross-bar intended to strengthen the construction
it blossomed, almost suddenly, into an elaborate scroll-work or an exceedingly
graceful semicircular ornament connecting all four legs, with a vase-shaped
knob in the centre. The arms and legs of chairs of this period were scrolled,
the splats of the back often showing a rich arrangement of spirals and
scrolls. This most decorative of all types appears to have been popularized
in England by the cavaliers who had been in exile with Charles II, and
had become familiar with it in the north-western parts of the European
continent. During the reign of William and Mary these charming forms degenerated
into something much stiffer and more rectangular, with a solid, more or
less fiddle-shaped splat and a cabriole leg with pad feet. The more ornamental
examples had cane seats and ill-proportioned cane backs. From these forms
was gradually developed the Chippendale chair, with its elaborately interlaced
back, its graceful arms and square or cabriole legs, the latter terminating
in the claw and ball or the pad foot. George Hepplewhite, Thomas Sheraton
and Robert Adam all aimed at lightening the chair, which, even in the
master hands of Thomas Chippendale, remained comparatively heavy. The
endeavour succeeded, and the modern chair is everywhere comparatively
slight.
index page1 page2
page3 page4 page5
debt settlement
company |
swyx training |
ipod
accessories |
florida
vacation home rentals |
Auto transport |
health insurance california |
villa near Disney |
disney vacation villas |
sell your
house fast |
california health
insurance
|
bravenet.com