From each of the furniture items, the chair might be of the most importance. While many other forms (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair should be viewed here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to developed types for example 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 clearly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic piece of art; it was also symbolic of social ranking. At the past royal courts there were significant distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to utilise a stool. Since the 20th century, a director’s and manager’s chair has developed a signifier of superior standing, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
As a furniture construction, the chair holds a range of various makes. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (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. We can make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our modern lifestyle has designated special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair forms have been adapted to match to differing human desires. Due to its significant link with man, the chair exists to its full meaning only when being utilised. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly evaluated with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the several areas of the chair are given labels corresponding to the names of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the fundamental job of your chair is to support the human body, its value is judged principally for how suitably it fulfills this practical function. Within the creation of a chair, the builder is limited with certain static law and principal measurements. In these limits, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair covers a period of several thousand years. There existed societies that made significant chair forms, expressive of the foremost object in the industries of craft and design. Among those peoples, special mention 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of careful design, are a finding from tomb discoveries. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed similar to those of an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular construction was made. There seems to be no noteworthy differentiation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The only difference lied in the complexity of ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was developed as an easily portable seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the type existed until much later points in time. But the stool also existed in the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the construction of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were worked of wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, reappeared but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient specimen still existing but as found in a trove of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which would be displayed. These odd legs were possibly manufactured of bent wood and were therefore put under great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely durable and were overtly drawn.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; some casts of seated Romans display examples of a denser and apparently somewhat more crudely designed klismos. Both styles, light or heavy, were revived in the Classicist time. The klismos style can be found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some special brands of profound iconicism in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China can not be tracked as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged folio of drawings and works of art has been kept safe, displaying the inside and outer parts of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an interesting likeness to representations of older chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, two fundamental chair forms existed in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was found both with or without arms though always with a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one design, however, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms to conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). The three sections are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of the back splat had an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could merely to a limited limit embolden corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top that off) indicate an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs likely were only for the senior individuals, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The structure and decorative issues are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been held together by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Artworks show a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be found in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair is also seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in vast amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by its elegant proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of fairly thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket designs may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won favour in many 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 styles 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 reception desks in Melbourne contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.