Out of all furniture items, the chair may be the most important. While most other pieces (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair must be said here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to further items for example the 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 clearly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece; it can also be symbolic of social rank. In the historical royal courts there were clear differences between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. In the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as a signifier of superior rank, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised level.
As a furniture purpose, the chair is used for a variety of different forms. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in 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 lifestyle has designated new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes has been adapted to suit to differing human uses. From its significant connection with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when used. Whereas it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly judged with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the individual limbs of a chair were given names according to the elements of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental purpose of a chair is to support a body, its worth is valued firstly on how suitably it does measure up to this practical job. Within the manufacture of the chair, the carpenter is limited for the static regulations and principal measurements. Under these limitations, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over dates of several thousand years. There existed cultures that have created individual chair types, seen of the foremost endeavour in the areas of technique and design. Among such civilisations, special note 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of careful craft, were known from findings made in tombs. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs structured like those of some animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular design was made. There was to our knowledge no significant differentiation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The real difference exists in the decorative ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was created as an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool this chair continued til much later periods. But the stool also took on the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are formed with wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, reappeared but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made from ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient fossil still extant but as seen in a wealth of pictorial objects. The better known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs were seen. These curving legs were most likely created out of bent wood and were therefore had 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 denoted.
The Romans adopted the Greek designs; evidence of models of seated Romans show designs of a more heavyset and which appear to be a somewhat less delicately built klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist era. The klismos chair can be evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special kinds of profound individuality around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be traced as well as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken serial of drawings and paintings has been protected, showing the insides and outer parts of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an intriguing resemblance to images of ancient chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been found both with or without arms although never missing a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one design, it must be said, the stiles are marginally curved on top of the arms to conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). Together, all three parts had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of the Chinese back splat then had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would merely to a limited limit support corner joints (and then are loose to top that off) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or have rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs likely were allowed only for senior people, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought 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 intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of these two furniture items is stylized. The construction and aesthetic elements are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual parts do not appear to have been joined together by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and held in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Works of art display a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same era, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be seen in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type of chair may also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious 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 style—that is to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of rather thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and finer items may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popular 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 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 versions 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 furniture in Sydney contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Tangalooma Island Resort is an earthly haven located in Tangalooma, Queensland in Australia. Formerly, it was a whaling station and was formed into an island resort because of its unique flora and fauna and its breathtaking views. Couples or families trying to find a good vacation destination can expect to definitely 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 distinctive Polynesian culture.