From all the furniture items, the chair might be primary. While most other forms (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair should be used here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds like a bench and sofa, which may be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly labeled.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support or aesthetic piece of art; it can also be symbolic of social place. Within the Medieval royal courts there were important signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to sit on a stool. During the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as an identifier of superior status, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher floor.
As a furniture purpose, the chair can be utilised for a wealth of different makes. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his position 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 used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has developed new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types have been changed to suit to growing human uses. From its significant link with man, the chair appears to its full purpose only when used. Whereas it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is understood best and judged best by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the different limbs of a chair are named according to the areas of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious function of a chair is to support our body, its value is judged generally by how suitably it fulfills this practical role. Within the design of a chair, the maker is limited within some static rules and principal measurements. Through these restrictions, however, the chair designer has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair extended over an era of several thousand years. There are cultures that have created significant chair shapes, expressive of the topmost craft in the areas of skill and aesthetics. Among those cultures, special mention should 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 items of careful make, are now seen from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs formed similar to those of some animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular construction was created. There seemed to be no notable difference from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The real variation lies in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the evidence of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was crafted to be an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool the stool existed til much later periods of time. But the stool also then existed in the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be seen, 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 were made in the construction of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats are formed with wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared again at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of these is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient object still extant but from a trove of pictorial material. The better recognised is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which can be visible. These curved legs were most likely to be created in bent wood and were probably needed to bear great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely stable and were plainly pointed out.
The Romans adopted the Greek chair; designs of statues of seated Romans display examples of a heavier and apparently somewhat crudely constructed klismos. Both styles, light and heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist time. The klismos style is seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special kinds of profound iconicism of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be charted as long as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed series of sketches and artworks was protected, displaying the interior and outside of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting familiarity to representations of past chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there were two particular chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair was seen both with or without arms though never without the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one image, it has been found, the stiles are delicately curved on top of the arms so as to conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). Each of the three limbs were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the design of the back splat had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that merely to a particular extent embolden corner joints (and furthermore are loose as well) signify an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs probably were kept only for older people, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is understood to have come to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian or 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 usually seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of these furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decoration aspects are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been held together by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and locked into position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Artworks project a design 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 produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same era, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is displayed in engravings of interiors of wealthy 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 can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are made from wood of fairly thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more expensive designs may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popular 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 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 executive furniture in Sydney contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Tangalooma Island Resort is an earthly paradise located in Tangalooma, Queensland in Australia. Originally, it was a whaling station and was turned into an island vacation hotspot because of its rare flora and fauna and its stunning views. Couples or families hunting down a great getaway destination can expect to certainly enjoy a Tangalooma Island Resort holiday.
Hawaii is home to many beautiful vacation destinations and holiday bookings 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 unique Polynesian culture.