From all the furniture needs, the chair might be of the most importance. While many other pieces (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be said here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds including a bench or sofa, which may be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently labeled.
The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic creation; it is historically a signifier of social standing. In the historical royal courts there were important connotations between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to utilise a stool. From the recent century, the director’s and manager’s chair has risen an indicator of superior position, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
As a furniture form, the chair is used for a wealth of different makes. There are chairs manufactured to fit 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 times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes have been evolved to suit to changing human needs. Because of its particular relationship with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when in use. While it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and regarded best by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the individual parts of a chair have been given names as the parts of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal work of the chair is to support our body, its worth is judged generally from how well it does fulfill this practical role. Within the creation of the chair, the maker is bound within particular static rules and principal measurements. Under these restrictions, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair is an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that have created significant chair forms, expressive of the principal work in the spheres of skill and design. Within such cultures, 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of careful make, are today known from discoveries made in tombs. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs structured not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular structure was obtained. There was from our knowledge no significant variation in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical populace. The only change exists in the type of ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was developed for an easily packed seat for army. As a camp stool this chair persevered for much later points in time. But the stool also played the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can already be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are created with wood. The simplistic build of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, also appeared some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this kind is the folding stool, of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient specimen still around but as seen in a trove of pictorial material. The better known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which could be seen. These unusual legs were thought to have been created out of bent wood and were thus put under great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super durable and were overtly denoted.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; quite a few models of seated Romans show examples of a denser and apparently kind of more crudely constructed klismos. Both designs, light or heavy, were brought back during the Classicist period. The klismos design is used in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some kinds of profound uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be traced as far back as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed folio of images and works of art had been preserved, displaying the interiors and exterior of Chinese households and the designs of furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing similarity to designs of ancient chairs.
As in Egypt, two chair forms dominated in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair is constructed both with or without arms however always with a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to support the back. In one type, it has been found, the stiles could be marginally curved by the arms in order to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). Each of the three areas were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of a back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would merely to a restricted ability embolden corner joints (and furthermore were loose in the result) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs likely were kept only for the senior people in the family, for they were respected greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of both of these furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decorative parts are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been fixed with either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Artworks project a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same period, held 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 interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as 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 held that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of relatively thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more upmarket items might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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 well-known and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
During 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 chairs in Brisbane contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Tangalooma Island Resort is a paradise located in Tangalooma, Queensland in Australia. Originally, it was a whaling station and was made into an island vacation hotspot because of its precious flora and fauna and its spectacular views. Couples or families trying to find a choice getaway destination will definitely 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 well-known for its pristine beaches, moderate climate, world-standard shopping facilities, and unique Polynesian culture.