From each of the furniture items, the chair might be of the most importance. While the majority of other items (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair must be looked upon here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to developed types such as the bench and sofa, which may be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly definitive.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support and/or an aesthetic creation; it is historically symbolic of social place. Within the historical royal courts there were important connotations between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. Since the last century, a director’s or manager’s chair has developed a symbol of superior position, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised level.
As its furniture purpose, the chair encompasses a wealth of various forms. There are chairs structured to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has designated unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds has adapted to match to growing human desires. From its close association with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when in use. While it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is seen best and evaluated with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter need each other. Thus the individual areas of a chair are given labels like the areas of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the original role of the chair is to support the body, its credit is evaluated principally from how suitably it does measure up to this practical job. Within the construction of a chair, the builder is limited for some static regulation and principal measurements. Inside these limits, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair extends over dates of several thousand years. There are cultures that held distinctive chair shapes, expressions of the premier craft in the spheres of technique and art. Out of these such cultures, 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of skilled design, were found from tomb discoveries. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs designed similar to those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular form was made. There seems to be no notable difference between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The general change lies in the kind of ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted to be an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool that stool persisted til much later days. But the stool then also was made as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the structure of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are worked from wood. The simplistic build of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then appeared some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of those is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient fossil still extant but in a trove of pictorial items. The archetype is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them can be shown. These unique legs were most likely to have been crafted from bent wood and were likely to have been bore a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely strong and were overtly indicated.
The Romans adopted the Greek style; designs of casts of seated Romans offer examples of a heavier and in appearance somewhat less delicately crafted klismos. Both kinds, the light or heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist era. The klismos influence is evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special forms of profound iconicism around Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be followed as far as that of Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full serial of images and artworks had been preserved, with images of the interiors and exteriors of Chinese houses and the furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a trove of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an intriguing familiarity to styles of ancient chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is found both with or without arms but never missing a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, however, the stiles are marginally curved on top of the arms so as to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). All three sections had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of the back splat then had a foundation for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a restricted extent embolden corner joints (and furthermore are loose additionally) are a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs likely were kept for the senior persons, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have come to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is intricately held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of these furniture items is stylized. The structure and aesthetic parts are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the fact that the individual items do not appear to have been held together by either glue or screws, but have been mortised with one another and locked into its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Works of art project a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same era, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interior of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its shapely 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 of forms—that was, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of quite thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket designs might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and won favour in large 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
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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
For a great deal on office furniture in Brisbane contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Tangalooma Island Resort is a haven found in Tangalooma, Queensland in Australia. Originally, it was a whaling station and was changed into an island holiday destination because of its distinctive flora and fauna and its stunning views. Couples or families seeking a good getaway destination would certainly cherish 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 famous for its pristine beaches, moderate climate, world-standard shopping facilities, and unique Polynesian culture.