Of all furniture objects, the chair could be of the most importance. While most other forms (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is regarded here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to developed types including the bench and sofa, which might be looked upon 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 curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or aesthetic object; it is historically a symbol of social hierarchy. Within the Medieval royal courts there were plain signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to squat on a stool. From the last century, the director’s and manager’s chair has developed an indicator of superior rank, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised platform.

As its furniture form, the chair is employed for a range of different forms. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the olden days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, or 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.

Our contemporary lifestyle has developed unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair forms has evolved to fit to differing human requirements. Because of its close relationship with man, the chair appears to its full significance only when in use. Although it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there are things inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly regarded with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter need one another. Thus the various parts of a chair are given labels according to the parts of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the simple job of the chair is to support a body, its worth is evaluated generally by how fully it measures up to this practical use. Within the manufacture of the chair, the builder is limited for particular static rules and principal measurements. In these regulations, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.

The history of the chair extended over dates of several thousand years. There were cultures that made iconic chair forms, as expressive of the highest object in the arenas of skill and art. Out of those civilisations, particular mention must 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 expert make, are today a finding from tombs. One 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 a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular structure was crafted. There was from our view no noteworthy difference in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The only difference exists in the decorative ornamentation, in the evidence of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was manufactured for an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool this form persevered until much later days. But the stool also was designed as the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool being forgotten. This can already be found, 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 were made in the form of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were made from wood. The plain build of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, came again but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this kind is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient specimen still in form but as seen from a wealth of pictorial evidence. The best known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs are seen. These creative legs were most likely to be crafted from bent wood and were therefore needed to bear great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely stable and were overtly indicated.

The Romans emulated the Greek design; evidence of casts of seated Romans display examples of a denser and apparently slightly less delicately constructed klismos. Both features, the light and the heavy, were brought back within the Classicist era. The klismos design can be seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in special forms of profound uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The past of the chair in China can not be followed as far back as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full collection of images and paintings had been kept, showing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a trove of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing similarity to pictures of older chairs.

As were the designs in Egypt, there were two standard chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be found both with and without arms though always having its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, though, the stiles could be delicately curved on top of the arms so as to conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the back). Each of the three parts had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of this back splat then had an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that just to a restricted capability stabilise corner joints (as well as being loose to top it off) indicate a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were only for elderly persons in the family, for they were greatly respected.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin 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 by use of a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of both furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decorative aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been affixed by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and held in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Works of art project a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be found in engravings of 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. Though this kind of chair might also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not held that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be 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 produced in impressive numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious 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 is, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of leisure 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 small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of fairly thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and finer designs would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the favourite 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 popularised 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 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, suggest 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.