We can thank the ancient Romans for plumbing, paved highways, and the Julian calendar. But of all their contributions to Western civilization, the most important, as far as I’m concerned, is the introduction to Europe of the free-standing chair. Until approximately the seventh or eighth century BC, we were still tucking in on the floor with the animals. The utilitarian bench and stool and even the floor cushion may have raised us marginally off the floor, but it was the anthropomorphic free-standing chair that marked humanity’s elevation from subsistence to “civilized” living. With its articulated arms and legs and seat and back, the chair denoted our abandonment of animal habits and postures in favor of comfort and symbols of power.
The Pharonic Egyptians were the first to develop the chair – for ceremonial use. In the sixth or seventh century BC, the Greeks modified Pharonic proportions to create the most elegant chair in history -- the ineffable Klismos.. With its low, concave backrest shaped to the human body, and splayed legs that allowed the sitter to lean back, the Klismos is as sculptural as a Brancusi and as comfortable as a contour. As the Roman Empire spread across Europe, the Klismos became a fundamental part of the scenery for the theater of Western life. . .at least for a millennium or so.
Having climbed to such a pinnacle of civility, how, we must wonder, could humanity could return to a life of squatting. Indeed, if anything was dark about the Dark Ages, it was the return to eating off the floor. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th Century AD the free-standing chair was all but forgotten…and for more than a thousand years!
Not until the dawn of the 16th century, as the earliest domestic interiors of Europe’s town-dwelling bourgeoisie evolved, did houses began to fill again with rudimentary furnishings. These took the form of built-in and portable chests for stage, seating, and sometimes sleeping as well as stools, folding benches, and trestle tables for eating and working. The nobility traveled among their many residences carrying their portable tables and collapsible chairs with them (hence the words for furniture in Italian, French and Spanish are mobili, mobiliers, and muebles). The poor lived wretchedly in huts of mud and straw. But city-dwelling merchants and artisans enjoyed their relative degree of medieval prosperity in long, narrow, two-story townhouses where they combined living and working. Although they were still virtually camping inside, this proud population began to think about something resembling permanence and, equally astonishing, comfort.
The chair connoted stability, affluence, and religio/civic authority. The earliest free-standing examples were X-frame chairs made of an X-shaped wooden frame across which canvas, webbing or leather was slung as a seat and stretched as a back. (It was derived from the X-shaped folding stool.) By the 17th century, an increased control over materials and expanded expertise in production enabled furniture pieces to be used as part of the decoration of a room. Fabric and padding were customarily attached to a chair frame with nails, the fabric and nails lending ornament and the padding comfort. Furniture, for the first time since the Roman era, came to be considered a valuable possession.
With this consciousness, the medieval X-frame chairs grew into “chairs of estate” and achieved throne-like prestige with expanded proportions, luxe upholstery, and decorations of with fringes, tassels, needlework, and large ornamental nails. This macho opulence ultimately gave way, toward the end of the 17th century, to a refinement of line and form. As the frame grew graceful, the seat and back grew commodious and intimations of the Klismos appeared. Ultimately, the abundantly cushioned and graceful fauteuil, the classic French open armchair, grew so desired for its elegance and largesse, that it was sustained and copied in most European countries throughout the next century. During the 18th century, which was the pinnacle of chair design, the chair came to mirror fashion. In France, for example, chairs were created to accommodate the fabulous heights of ladies’ wigs or to accentuate the simply cut gowns of the favored Grecian style.
Regardless of its age or condition, a beautiful chair is a work of art. In my garden, a half-wooded, subtropical Giverny, a collection of old wrought iron garden chairs suggest a poetry of ruin. Although each chair possesses some arabesqued element – a scrolled armrest, a fanned backrest, a splayed foot -- they are more Giocommetti than Brancusi, skeletal and rusting into a deterioration of sculptural glory. Poised for visitation, their assembly begs curiosity – who and what are they waiting for out there in the elements as if in silent anticipation of a Quaker meeting.
Inside the house, my oval-back dining chairs are upholstered in a leopard pattern print on which my Bengal cats, curled in slumber, become almost indistinguishable. At the head of the dining table sits a Klismos-like armchair with silvered finish and ram’s-head finials. If such a thing were not oxymoronic, it could be considered a modest throne.
My friend, the illustrator Barry Zaid has an actual throne in his “sitting” room. It is one of only nine reproductions that exist in the world of a chair made for Sitamen, daughter of Tuya and Yuyu, aunt and uncle of the Pharoah Tutankhamen. The original was discovered when Tutankhamen’s tomb was opened in 1903 and is now (we hope, still) in the Cairo museum. The modeled gesso and gilt decoration on the back panel of the chair consists of a winged sun disc below which appears a scene showing a dual image of Sitamen receiving gifts of gold necklaces from female servants. The accompanying inscription above the seated princess gives her name: "The eldest daughter of the king whom he loves, Sitamen." The text inscribed above the servants describes the offering of gold from "the lands of the south."
Barry bought his throne from an antique dealer in 1976. Today it sits in his South Beach apartment among his collections of mosaic urns and obelisks, glass globes, and examples of his own art. It looks right at home. His spotted Bengal cat Chitta and her companion Penny long ago claimed it for a napping spot.
You can read more about the Treasures of Yuya and Tuyu at http://anubis4_2000.tripod.com/SpecialExhibits/YuyaTuyu.htm
You can see Barry’s graphic design, illustration, and packaging art at http://www.barryzaid.com
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