Out of each of the furniture items, the chair may be the most important. While many other items (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair should be viewed here in the common sense, from stool to throne to further makes like the bench or sofa, which can be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic creation; it is historically symbolic of social rank. From the old royal courts there were social signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. In the 20th century, a director’s or manager’s chair has become a symbol of superior status, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated level.
As its furniture form, the chair holds a number of various makes. There are chairs manufactured to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used 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. We have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Modern day living has demanded special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair types have been evolved to conform to changing human uses. From its significant connection with man, the chair exists to its full meaning only when in employ. Although it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly evaluated with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter require the other. Thus the individual parts of the chair are named corresponding to the names of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elementary job of your chair is to support your body, its value is tested basically on how completely it does fulfill this practical function. Within the manufacture of the chair, the carpenter is restricted with the static law and principal measurements. Under these limits, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair was dates of several thousand years. There were civilizations that had made significant chair types, expressive of the foremost object in the areas of handling and design. Out of these such societies, a mention can 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 result of careful make, were seen from tombs. The first of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs formed akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular design was created. There was in our view no particular change in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The general change lied in the decorative ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was manufactured for an easily packed seat for officers. As a camp stool that kind stayed around until much later points in time. But the stool then also was created as the character of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool being forgotten. This can already be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats were made of wood. The simple build of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, can be seen but some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this kind is the folding stool, of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient object still extant but as in a trove of pictorial items. The most well known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs would be seen. These unusual legs were thought to be created from bent wood and were in that case had to bear a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely stable and were overtly signified.
The Romans emulated the Greek style; some models of seated Romans display evidence of a denser and apparently rather less intricately built klismos. Both designs, light and heavy, were seen again in the Classicist time. The klismos influence is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special kinds of notable originality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as far as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of sketches and artworks was kept safe, detailing the insides and exterior of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing resemblance to images of ancient chairs.
Just like in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been constructed both with or without arms although always with a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles had been lightly curved by the arms so as to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). Together, all three parts are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of this back splat exercised an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could merely to a restricted capability stabilise corner joints (and then are loose to top it off) signify an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or have rounded edges—acknowledging perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs probably were reserved for older persons, for they were esteemed greatly.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decoration elements are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been affixed by means of either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Paintings show a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same time, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be evidenced 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. Although this kind of chair is also made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its elegant 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 styles—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of relatively thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive items may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engravings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popularised 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
During 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 brands 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, purport 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 paradise situated in Tangalooma, Queensland in Australia. It was formerly a whaling station and was changed into an island vacation hotspot because of its distinctive flora and fauna and its wonderful views. Couples or families hunting down a good holiday destination will certainly love 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 famous for its pristine beaches, moderate climate, world-standard shopping facilities, and unique Polynesian culture.