Of all furniture forms, the chair might be of most importance. While many other objects (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair must be viewed here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to derivative makes such as 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 distinguished.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic creation; it is historically symbolic of social rank. In the old royal courts there were important connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to use a stool. In the last century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as a signifier of superior rank, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher level.
In a furniture purpose, the chair holds a variety of variations. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (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 can have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has demanded new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair shapes have changed to match to growing human desires. Because of its particular importance with man, the chair lives to its full significance only when utilised. While it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is seen best and tested by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the various elements of a chair were labeled as the areas of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the simple function of the chair is to support a human body, its value is tested generally by how fully it does measure up to this practical purpose. In the creation of the chair, the builder is bound for the static laws and principal measurements. In these boundaries, however, the chair maker has great freedom.
The history of the chair was a period of several thousand years. There were societies that have created distinctive chair forms, expressive of the topmost work in the areas of handling and art. Within these peoples, individual 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 construct of expert design, are seen from findings made in tombs. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair has four legs structured like those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular structure was made. There was from our knowledge no particular difference in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The simple change lied in the level of ornamentation, in the evidence of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was created for an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool this chair persisted until much later periods of time. But the stool then also existed in the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can already be seen, 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 structure of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are formed out of wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then came up but somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of these is the folding stool, of ashwood, now seen at Guldhj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient specimen still extant but as seen in a trove of pictorial evidence. The best recognised is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs would be displayed. These curving legs were likely to have been executed with bent wood and were thus had to bear extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely durable and were plainly pointed out.
The Romans emulated the Greek chair; evidence of models of seated Romans offer examples of a denser and apparently slightly less intricately constructed klismos. Both features, light or heavy, were revived in the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is known in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of notable originality around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.
China The history of the chair in China can not be followed as well as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618-907) an unscathed series of sketches and works of art has been protected, showing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese houses and their furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting similarity to designs of previous chairs.
Same as in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair is designed both with and without arms however never missing a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one image, however, the stiles had been lightly curved by the arms in order to fit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a back). All three areas are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of a back splat had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could only to a restricted capability stabilise corner joints (as well as being loose to top that off) indicate an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges-referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs likely were reserved only for senior individuals in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is elegantly affixed 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 both these furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decorative parts are combined in a manner that is both nave and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual parts do not look to have been held together with either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and locked into place 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 type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with 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 in the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century A low, square, upholstered style of chair is found 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 design of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the style actually began 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 patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The form 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, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750-conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat conforms 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 small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of fairly thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket items may be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used in place of upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and found favour 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 well-known 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 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 Eugne Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaud 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 Mtro.
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 storage in Sydney contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.