From all the furniture objects, the chair may be the most important. While most of the other objects (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is intended to be looked upon here in the common sense, from stool to throne to complex makes including a bench and sofa, which may be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or aesthetic object; it can also be an indicator of social standing. In the past royal courts there were significant signifiers between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to make do with a stool. During the past century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as a signifier of superior rank, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
As its furniture purpose, the chair is employed for a wealth of various models. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the past there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern living has designated unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds has been perfected to conform to changing human desires. Because of its close relationship with man, the chair appears to its full advantage only when in employ. Whereas it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be things inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the different areas of the chair were named likened to the areas of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary function of the chair is to support a body, its credit is evaluated principally on how suitably it measures up to this practical function. In the manufacture of a chair, the chair maker is limited by certain static rules and principal measurements. Within these restrictions, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that made unique chair shapes, expressions of the topmost work in the spheres of handling and design. In 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of expert design, were seen from discoveries made in tombs. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs shaped like those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular construction was crafted. There was to all appearances no marked differentiation between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The general change exists in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was designed to be an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool that kind stayed for much later periods of time. But the stool also existed in the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can now be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were worked from wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, also appeared but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient item still existing but as seen in a trove of pictorial evidence. The significant kind is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs are seen. These curving legs were presumed to be created out of bent wood and were as such had to bear huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely durable and were plainly signified.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; quite a few models of seated Romans display examples of a more heavyset and are a slightly more crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were seen again during the Classicist period. The klismos style is evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some kinds of considerable uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be charted as long as in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of drawings and paintings had been kept safe, displaying the inside and outer parts of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a collection of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an intriguing resemblance to representations of previous chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This chair was found both with or without arms though always having a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one kind, however, the stiles are slightly curved over the arms for the purpose of suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). All three sections are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of the Chinese back splat then had an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only to a particular limit embolden corner joints (and were loose additionally) represent a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs most likely were reserved for older individuals in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic issues are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual items do not appear to have been held together by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Works of art display a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be displayed in engravings of interiors of affluent 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 in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in vast amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its elegant 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 form—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of fairly thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive examples would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the preference 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 commonly known 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, 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 a paradise situated in Tangalooma, Queensland in Australia. It was originally a whaling station and was made into an island vacation hotspot because of its rare flora and fauna and its breathtaking views. Couples or families looking for a good getaway destination will certainly treasure 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 distinctive Polynesian culture.