Of all furniture forms, the chair may be the most important. While most of the other objects (save the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is meant to be viewed here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to complex makes for example the bench or 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 overtly definitive.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support or aesthetic craft; it is also a symbol of social ranking. From the historical royal courts there were significant signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. In the 20th century, a director’s or manager’s chair has risen iconic of superior position, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher level.
In a furniture construction, the chair can be utilised for a number of different models. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We have 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.
Our modern lifestyle has demanded particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms has changed to fit to growing human requirements. From its significant connection with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when in use. Though it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly evaluated with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the several elements of a chair are labeled as the parts of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple work of the chair is to support your body, its worth is valued firstly for how suitably it measures up to this practical use. Within the manufacture of a chair, the chair maker is limited for the static legislation and principal measurements. Under these restrictions, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extended over dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that had made iconic chair shapes, as seen of the foremost object in the industries of technique and art. From these peoples, special 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 make, were seen from tombs. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs structured not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular form was made. There was from our understanding no marked variation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical populace. The main difference exists in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the evidence of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was crafted for an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool that kind stayed for much later times. But the stool then also existed in the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are created of wood. The easy make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, was then seen some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this type is the folding stool, of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient object still extant but as found in a wealth of pictorial objects. The significant kind is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those would be seen. These creative legs were likely to have been executed of bent wood and were as such had to bear huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super solid and were clearly denoted.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; evidence of statues of seated Romans offer examples of a heavier and in appearance slightly less intricately designed klismos. Both kinds, the light and heavy, were seen again within the Classicist period. The klismos style can be found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular brands of notable individuality of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be followed as well as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken collection of images and works of art has been kept safe, detailing the interior and exterior of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an astonishing familiarity to representations of ancient chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was found both with or without arms however never without a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one form, it has been seen, the stiles were delicately curved over the arms to conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a back). Each of the three areas had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of the Chinese back splat then had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only just to a restricted capability stabilise corner joints (and are loose to top it off) are a design signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or has rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when 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 kept for elderly persons, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The constructive and decorative elements are combined in a manner that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been held together by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised on 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 put 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, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same period, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is seen in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the innovation actually originated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and fine 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, as created 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 leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike practices in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of quite thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and finer examples can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic 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 popularised 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
For a great deal on reception desks in Brisbane contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.