Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair could be primary. While the majority of other items (save the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair should be regarded here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to further kinds like the bench or sofa, which should be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece; it historically was symbolic of social status. Within the past royal courts there were clear connotations between having a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to cope with a stool. During the recent century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as an identifier of superior dignity, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set level.
As a furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a variety of variations. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design 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 modern lifestyle has derived particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds has been perfected to conform to evolving human uses. Because of its particular importance with man, the chair exists to its full meaning only when utilised. Although it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is understood best and fairly judged by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the various elements of a chair are given names likened to the areas of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the first purpose of the chair is to support our body, its value is evaluated basically by how well it measures up to this practical function. Within the design of the chair, the maker is limited under the static regulations and principal measurements. In these limits, however, the chair maker has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair is a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that have created iconic chair shapes, as expressive of the premier object in the industries of handling and design. From those societies, particular 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of careful craft, were seen from tomb findings. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs designed like those of an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular construction was obtained. There was in our knowledge no noteworthy differentiation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The only difference was in the complex ornamentation, in the evidence of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was created to be an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool that stool stayed until much later days. But the stool then also existed in the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted 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 because the seats are created with wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, reappeared at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this type is the folding stool, from ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient item still extant but as in a wealth of pictorial items. The archetype is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them can be displayed. These unique legs were presumably executed of bent wood and were therefore had huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super strong and were particularly drawn.
The Romans embued the Greek design; existing casts of seated Romans are evidence of a thicker and apparently somewhat less delicately built klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were revived during the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence is seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special forms of notable uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as far back as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of images and works of art was protected, detailing the interior and exterior of Chinese homes and their furniture. Kept also of the 16th century are some chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing likeness to designs of previous chairs.
Like in Egypt, there were two particular chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair was found both with and without arms although always having the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one design, it has been found, the stiles are slightly curved by the arms to suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). Each of the three limbs are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of the back splat then had an introduction for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only to a limited limit reinforce corner joints (and were loose additionally) indicate a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs likely were allowed only for senior persons, for they were greatly esteemed.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The manufacture and decoration aspects are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the fact that the individual parts do not appear to have been joined together by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised into one another and fixed in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Artworks show a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is found in engravings of the interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair may also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not decided that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast amounts, 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 style 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 was, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are stable, 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 every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket examples might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the preference in several 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
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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
For a great deal on office furniture in Brisbane contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.