From each of the furniture pieces, the chair might be the primary one. While most of the other items (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is said here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further kinds including the bench or sofa, which might be looked upon 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 intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support and/or an aesthetic item; it historically was semiotic of social hierarchy. In the old royal courts there were important connotations between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to use a stool. Since the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has risen an indicator of superior status, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
As its furniture purpose, the chair is employed for a number of different forms. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our lifestyle has designated unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair types have been adapted to suit to different human needs. From its particular association with man, the chair lives to its full meaning only when in use. While it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and regarded best by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter require each other. Thus the various parts of a chair are labeled like the areas of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal function of the chair is to support our body, its worth is tested principally from how completely it fulfills this practical job. Within the construction of the chair, the designer is bound in particular static laws and principal measurements. Under these boundaries, however, the chair maker has large freedom.
The history of the chair is dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that held iconic chair forms, as expressive of the highest endeavour in the areas of technique and aesthetics. Within such cultures, individual mention must 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 objects of masterful design, were found from tomb discoveries. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular form was obtained. There was to all appearances no noteworthy change from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The only difference lied in the type of ornamentation, in the choice of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was developed for an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the stool persevered til much later days. But the stool also then was created for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the construction of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats were made with wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, can be seen at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not in any ancient specimen still existing but from a trove of pictorial objects. The most recognisable is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs would be shown. These creative legs were thought to have been manufactured with bent wood and were likely to have been needed to bear huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super strong and were visibly drawn.
The Romans embued the Greek design; evidence of casts of seated Romans offer designs of a more heavyset and which appear to be a rather more crudely constructed klismos. Both kinds, the light or heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair is used in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in special brands of marked originality around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The progression of the chair in China can not be traced as far back as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of sketches and artworks had been preserved, showing the interiors and exterior of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an intriguing similarity to representations of ancient chairs.
Like in Egypt, there existed two standard chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be found both with or without arms though never without the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one style, it must be said, the stiles had been marginally curved by the arms in order to suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). Each of the three sections had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of the back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that just to a limited ability support corner joints (and then were loose as well) signify a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—a left over maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs presumably were kept for elderly individuals, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resultant effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decorative issues are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual members do not look to have been held together by either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Artworks display a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same period, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be displayed in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair may also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not believed that the form actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of rather thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and finer chairs may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used in place of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the preference in several 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 popular 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 reception desks in Brisbane contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Sphere: Related Content