Of all furniture items, the chair may be primary. While many other objects (save for the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair must be viewed here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to derivative chairs like the 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 evidently defined.

The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic creation; it historically is a symbol of social place. Within the historical royal courts there were clear differences between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. Since the past century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as an indicator of superior standing, as well as in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set level.

In a furniture construction, the chair ranges from a number of various models. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our contemporary lifestyle has developed unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds have been evolved to match to evolving human requirements. Due to its significant connection with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when used. Although it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is best seen and tested by a person using it, because chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the several parts of the chair were given names as the elements of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the basic function of a chair is to support a body, its worth is evaluated generally for how fully it fulfills this practical purpose. In the construction of a chair, the chair maker is restricted with certain static laws and principal measurements. Under these boundaries, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.

The history of the chair extended over an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that had unique chair types, expressive of the leading work in the arenas of craft and art. From such cultures, special 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful design, are now found from findings made in tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair has four legs shaped as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular design was created. There was from our knowledge no notable difference from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The simple difference exists in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted for an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that form existed until much later periods of time. But the stool then took on the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the shape of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were formed of wood. The simplistic build of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then appeared but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of those is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient object still around but as in a variety 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). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those could be seen. These creative legs were likely to have been created in bent wood and were likely to have been had to bear huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely durable and were overtly signified.

The Romans embued the Greek designs; existing casts of seated Romans offer chairs of a thicker and which appear to be a slightly crudely built klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were popularised during the Classicist era. The klismos influence is seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special types of notable uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be charted as well as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of sketches and paintings had been kept safe, with images of the interiors and exterior of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing resemblance to designs of previous chairs.

As was the case in Egypt, there were two particular chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is found both with and without arms though never missing its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one kind, however, the stiles were slightly curved over the arms for the purpose of conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a chairback). Together, all three areas were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of this back splat later had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that only to a restricted limit embolden corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top that off) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be 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 era armchairs presumably were reserved for senior people, for they were greatly esteemed.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decoration parts are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been fixed by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Paintings display a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same period, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be displayed in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the style actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in vast amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed 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—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat suits to the human body and allows 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 are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of relatively thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and finer items can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in style 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 found favour 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
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 styles 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 reception desks in Sydney contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.

Tags: ,