Of all furniture objects, the chair could be the most imperative. While the majority of other pieces (save for the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be said here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds including the bench and sofa, which might be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and an aesthetic object; it was historically symbolic of social standing. Within the Medieval royal courts there were important connotations between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to cope with a stool. During the 20th century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been iconic of superior dignity, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on an elevated floor.
As a furniture purpose, the chair is utilised for a wealth of various makes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has demanded unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds have been perfected to fit to growing human requirements. For its unique relationship with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when utilised. Though it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is really understood and regarded best by a person using it, for chair and sitter need one another. Thus the individual elements of a chair have been labeled like the parts of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary function of your chair is to support our human body, its worth is tested basically on how well it measures up to this practical function. Within the manufacture of the chair, the builder is limited in certain static regulation and principal measurements. Under these regulations, however, the chair builder has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There existed cultures that created significant chair types, as expressive of the principal work in the spheres of skill and creativity. In such societies, 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of careful scheme, are now a finding from discoveries made in tombs. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs designed akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular form was created. There was from our knowledge no significant variation in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular peasantry. The only change was in the decorative ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was manufactured for an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool the type continued for much later days. But the stool then was designed as the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the structure of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are created with wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, was seen again but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this form is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient item still around but seen in a variety of pictorial evidence. The significant kind is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which were displayed. These unique legs were understood to be created out of bent wood and were likely to have been needed to bear huge pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely solid and were particularly indicated.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; existing casts of seated Romans show examples of a heavier and which appear to be a slightly crudely constructed klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist period. The klismos style is known in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special forms of considerable uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China can not be charted as long as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of drawings and paintings was protected, detailing the inside and outside of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing resemblance to images of ancient chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been designed both with or without arms but never missing the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one kind, it has been seen, the stiles were lightly curved over the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Each of the three areas are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of the back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that just to a limited ability reinforce corner joints (and then are loose in the result) signify an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or has rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs likely were only for elderly persons in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decorative parts are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual items do not appear to have been held together by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Works of art project a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same period, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is displayed in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of relatively thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and finer items would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engravings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and found favour 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 popular and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
In 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.
Modern
After 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
For a great deal on office chairs in Brisbane contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Sphere: Related Content