Twelve chairs in the Russian interior . The collection of the State Historical Museum | 2000 | JPEG | ~2400x1600 | 33,6 Mb

Attention to the everyday human life, to the life of town-dwellers and inhabitants of country-houses expressed itself in the passion for the interior-painting — a genre which came into being as early as the end of the XVIII century. Combination of those interiors with the original pieces of furniture of the three past ages let us clearly observe the environment our ancestors inhabited. Chairs (for a long time this word was used also to designate an armchair) formed an integral part of interior. And it is the chair that gives an idea of a furniture style as a whole. The chair as the most movable object of furnishing was more subject to the fast changes of fashion. It demonstrates a great variety of forms and stylistic nuances, which can hardly be traced in any other article of furniture. Before the end of the XVII century chairs were used rarely only by the tsar and boyars families and ecclesiastical hierarchs primarily in the function of the throne. From the XVIII century a chair deprived of its exceptional role became a necessary article in everyday life required by every interior. From that time on it reflects an individual taste and a style of the epoch.