From all the furniture objects, the chair might be primary. While most other items (save for the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be said here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to derivative types such as the bench and sofa, which should be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and aesthetic object; it can also be semiotic of social placement. Within the past royal courts there were social connotations between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. During the recent century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen an identifier of superior position, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised floor.
In its furniture creation, the chair is employed for a number of various models. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair types have adapted to match to different human desires. For its unique relationship with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when utilised. Although it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and judged best by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter need each other. Thus the individual parts of the chair are given names corresponding to the elements of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious function of your chair is to support your body, its credit is judged principally from how fully it does measure up to this practical function. In the creation of the chair, the carpenter is limited within particular static legislation and principal measurements. In these rules, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair was a period of several thousand years. There were cultures that held unique chair forms, as seen of the highest work in the arenas of technique and design. Within these such societies, special mention should 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 structures of expert make, are today a finding from discoveries made in tombs. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs formed akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular form was created. There was from our understanding no noteworthy change in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The general difference existed in the complexity of ornamentation, in the choice of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was designed as an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool this form stayed for much later days. But the stool also then took on the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can already be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were worked from wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen again some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this type is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient specimen still extant but as seen in a wealth of pictorial evidence. The archetype is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them are visible. These creative legs were considered to be executed from bent wood and were thus needed to bear great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very durable and were plainly signified.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; existing casts of seated Romans display evidence of a more heavyset and which appear to be a slightly crudely constructed klismos. Both features, the light and the heavy, were revived within the Classicist era. The klismos style can be found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular types of notable uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be followed as well as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged folio of images and works of art had been kept safe, displaying the interiors and exteriors of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting likeness to representations of ancient chairs.
Same as in Egypt, two major chair forms existed in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is designed both with or without arms although never missing the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, it has been seen, the stiles could be lightly curved by the arms to sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a chairback). Each of the three areas were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of the Chinese back splat then had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that merely to a restricted extent support corner joints (and are loose into the bargain) represent a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs likely were allowed only for senior individuals, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The structure and decorative issues are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the way that the individual items do not seem to have been fixed together by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and fixed in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art show a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same time, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair is also seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof have wood of rather thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more upmarket designs can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popular 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
Within 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 products 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
For a great deal on office chairs in Sydney contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Tangalooma Island Resort is an earthly paradise situated in Tangalooma, Queensland in Australia. It was originally a whaling station and was changed into an island holiday destination because of its distinctive flora and fauna and its stunning views. Couples or families hunting down a super holiday destination will undoubtedly love a Tangalooma Island Resort holiday.
Hawaii is home to many beautiful vacation destinations and holiday bookings to these tropical islands can be made by Travel Online. This iconic tourist destination is well-known for its pristine beaches, moderate climate, world-standard shopping facilities, and unique Polynesian culture.