Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair could be of the most importance. While the majority of other pieces (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair must be used here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to derivative items including a bench and sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or an aesthetic item; it can also be symbolic of social status. From the old royal courts there were important signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to utilise a stool. During the last century, a director’s or manager’s chair has developed an indicator of superior rank, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised floor.
In its furniture creation, the chair is utilised for a number of variations. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has derived new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair types has evolved to conform to changing human needs. For its particular relationship with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when being used. Although it makes no difference 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 fairly regarded with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the individual parts of a chair have been named corresponding to the names of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental role of a chair is to support our human body, its value is tested primarily by how completely it does fulfill this practical purpose. In the build of the chair, the designer is restricted for some static regulation and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair builder has great freedom.
The history of the chair extends over an era of several thousand years. There are peoples that had made individual chair shapes, as expressive of the leading object in the spheres of craft and design. In those cultures, individual mention can 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of expert design, were found from tomb discoveries. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs designed akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular form was crafted. There was to our understanding no marked variation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The main variation exists in the complexity of ornamentation, in the evidence of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed as an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool that form existed during much later times. But the stool then also existed in the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are worked out of wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then came again but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this kind is the folding stool, from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not from any ancient fossil still extant but as seen from a variety of pictorial material. The best recognised is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs can be visible. These curved legs were likely to have been created from bent wood and were likely to have been had huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very solid and were plainly drawn.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; existing statues of seated Romans display examples of a thicker and which appear to be a somewhat less intricately constructed klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were brought back during the Classicist era. The klismos chair is found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some types of considerable originality of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be charted as well as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of sketches and works of art has been kept safe, displaying the interior and exteriors of Chinese households and their furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an intriguing similarity to images of ancient chairs.
Like in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is constructed both with or without arms however never missing its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one form, however, the stiles were delicately curved on top of the arms so as to conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). All three areas had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of this back splat then had a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that merely to a limited extent embolden corner joints (and then were loose to top it off) represent a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and had on occasion a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were allowed only for the senior persons in the family, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is elegantly fixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The construction and decorative issues are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been adjoined by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and fixed in its 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 show a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same time, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair is also seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not believed that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by its elegant proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that was, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of quite thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive chairs would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which came from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popularised in large 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 popularised 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, hint 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 that can be found in Tangalooma, Queensland in Australia. Formerly, it was a whaling station and was changed into an island holiday destination because of its rare flora and fauna and its glorious views. Couples or families looking for a choice getaway destination will undoubtedly enjoy 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 famous for its pristine beaches, moderate climate, world-standard shopping facilities, and unique Polynesian culture.