e claw and ball or the pad foot.
Hepplewhite, Sheraton and Adam all aimed at lightening the chair, which,
even in the master hands of Chippendale, remained comparatively heavy.
The endeavour succeeded, and the modern chair is everywhere
comparatively slight. Chippendale and Hepplewhite between them
determined what appears to be the final form of the chair, for since
their time practically no new type has lasted, and in its main
characteristics the chair of the 20th century is the direct derivative
of that of the later 18th.

The 18th century was, indeed, the golden age of the chair, especially in
France and England, between which there was considerable give and take
of ideas. Even Diderot could not refrain from writing of them in his
_Encyclopedie_. The typical Louis Seize chair, oval-backed and ample of
seat, with descending arms and round-reeded legs, covered in Beauvais or
some such gay tapestry woven with Boucher or Watteau-like scenes, is a
very gracious object, in which the period reached its high-water mark.
The Empire brought in squat and squabby shapes, comfortable enough no
doubt, but entirely destitute of inspiration. English Empire chairs were
often heavier and more sombre than those of French design. Thenceforward
the chair in all countries ceased to attract the artist. The _art
nouveau_ school has occasionally produced something of not unpleasing
simplicity; but more often its efforts have been frankly ugly or even
grotesque. There have been practically no novelties, with the exception
perhaps of the basket-chair and such like, which have been made possible
by modern command over material. So much, indeed, is the present
indebted to the past in this matter that even the revolving chair, now
so familiar in offices, has a pedigree of something like four centuries
(see also SEDAN-CHAIR). (J. P.-B.)

CHAISE (the French for "chair," through a transference from a
"sedan-chair" to a wheeled vehicle), a light two- or four-wheeled
carriage with a movable hood or "calash"; the "post-chaise" was the
fast-travelling carriage of the 18th and early 19th centuries. It was
closed and four-wheeled for two or four horses and with the driver
riding postillion.

CHAKRATA, a mountain cantonment in the Dehra Dun district of the United
Provinces of India, on the range of hills overlooking the valleys of the
Jumna and the Tons, at an elevation of 7000 ft. It was founded in 1866
and first occupied in April 1869.