Out of all furniture objects, the chair may be the paramount one. While most other objects (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be used here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to complex chairs like the bench or sofa, which should be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic creation; it can also be symbolic of social ranking. At the old royal courts there were significant signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to use a stool. Since the last century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has become an indicator of superior dignity, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised floor.
In a furniture creation, the chair can be used for a range of different makes. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has derived new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms have evolved to conform to different human desires. From its particular association with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when in use. While it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly tested with a person using it, for chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the several parts of the chair are given names likened to the parts of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the clear purpose of a chair is to support the human body, its worth is evaluated principally by how well it fulfills this practical job. Within the structure of a chair, the chair maker is restricted within particular static legislation and principal measurements. Inside these rules, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair lasts over an epoch of several thousand years. There were societies that had made iconic chair forms, as expressions of the leading endeavour in the spheres of craft and creativity. Out of such societies, particular 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful craft, were known from findings made in tombs. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs crafted not unlike those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular structure was created. There was apparently no marked variation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The simple change was in the kind of ornamentation, in the evidence of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was designed for an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool the stool persisted til much later points. But the stool then was created as the task of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can today be observed, 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 constructed in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were made with wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, was seen again but somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this type is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient specimen still extant but seen in a wealth of pictorial items. The better known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place by Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them were shown. These unusual legs were presumed to be created from bent wood and were therefore subjected to great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely solid and were visibly denoted.
The Romans emulated the Greek designs; existing casts of seated Romans show examples of a thicker and apparently rather crudely constructed klismos. Both types, light or heavy, were seen again in the Classicist time. The klismos influence is seen in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular types of considerable iconicism within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be traced as long as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of drawings and paintings has been kept safe, with images of the interior and outer parts of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting familiarity to pictures of older chairs.
As were the designs in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been found both with and without arms although never missing the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one style, it must be said, the stiles had been slightly curved above the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). All three areas are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of the back splat then had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a limited limit support corner joints (and are loose additionally) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes upon the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or is given rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were allowed only for elderly people, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The structure and decorative issues are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not seem to have been adjoined by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and locked into position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Artworks display a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same time, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is seen in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair may also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious 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 of styles—that is to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and allows 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 covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of fairly thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more upmarket items might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used rather than upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popularised 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 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 Sydney contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Tangalooma Island Resort is an earthly haven located in Tangalooma, Queensland in Australia. Formerly, it was a whaling station and was changed into an island resort because of its distinctive flora and fauna and its stunning views. Couples or families looking for a super holiday destination will certainly treasure a Tangalooma Island Resort holiday.
Hawaii is home to many beautiful vacation destinations and holiday reservations 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 distinctive Polynesian culture.