Of all furniture needs, the chair could be the most important. While most of the other items (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair must be used here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to developed types including a bench and sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support or aesthetic craft; it is also an indicator of social placement. From the past royal courts there were social connotations between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. Since the 20th century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen an identifier of superior status, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
As a furniture creation, the chair is employed for a number of various forms. There are chairs structured to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used 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 have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has developed new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair shapes has been perfected to fit to evolving human requirements. For its close association with man, the chair exists to its full importance only when used. Although it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be items inside or not, a chair is really seen and tested by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the various areas of a chair have been given labels likened to the names of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the obvious role of a chair is to support the body, its credit is judged primarily from how well it fulfills this practical job. Within the creation of the chair, the designer is restricted in certain static laws and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair was an epoch of several thousand years. There are societies that had made distinctive chair shapes, as seen of the principal object in the industries of handling and design. From such cultures, individual note 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of skilled make, are today a finding from tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs crafted similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular form was crafted. There was to our understanding no particular difference from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary people. The only difference lied in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed as an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this chair stayed until much later periods. But the stool then played the role of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can now be found, 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 in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are formed of wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, appeared some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this form is the folding stool, of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient fossil still extant but seen in a large amount of pictorial material. The most well known is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them would be displayed. These curved legs were likely to be executed out of bent wood and were likely to have been bore a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very strong and were visibly drawn.
The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; some models of seated Romans are chairs of a heavier and are a slightly crudely crafted klismos. Both types, the light and heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist time. The klismos style can be evidenced in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of notable iconicism within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.
China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as far as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of sketches and artworks was kept safe, showing the inside and outer parts of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a number of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing familiarity to representations of older chairs.
As in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair has been seen both with or without arms but always with the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one type, it must be said, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms in order to fit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). Together, all three parts are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of the back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only to a limited capability embolden corner joints (and are loose as a result) signify a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs probably were reserved only for older persons, for they were given great esteem.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decorative issues are combined in a style that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been fixed together by use of either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Artworks display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same era, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be seen in engravings of the 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 design of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not held that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat suits 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 tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are made from wood of relatively thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket designs may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the favourite 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
In 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
For a great deal on office furniture in Sydney contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Sphere: Related Content