The History of the Chair
From each of the furniture needs, the chair might be the most imperative. While most other forms (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair must be said here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms for example a bench and sofa, which may be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinuishable.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or aesthetic object; it historically is a symbol of social placement. Within the old royal courts there were social connotations between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to sit on a stool. During the 20th century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as a symbol of superior status, as well as in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised floor.
As its furniture purpose, the chair can be utilised for a range of variations. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has designated particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair shapes have adapted to conform to differing human desires. Because of its unique relationship with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when utilised. Though it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is really seen and judged with a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the various elements of the chair are given names as the elements of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the principal purpose of your chair is to support our human body, its value is tested primarily on how fully it does measure up to this practical use. Within the creation of the chair, the chair maker is restricted by the static regulation and principal measurements. Under these restrictions, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.
The history of the chair covers an epoch of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that had made unique chair forms, seen of the leading craft in the spheres of skill and art. Among 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of skilled design, are now seen from tomb discoveries. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs crafted similar to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular form was created. There was in our knowledge no particular change from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The main change existed in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was developed to be an easily stored seat for army. As a camp stool that chair existed for much later days. But the stool then was designed for the role of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can already be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the construction of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats were worked out of wood. The simple make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared again some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of those is the folding stool, of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient item still existing but as found in a variety of pictorial material. The significant kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs were seen. These unique legs were considered to have been created of bent wood and were likely to have been subjected to extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely durable and were clearly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek chair; some statues of seated Romans offer designs of a heavier and are a somewhat more crudely designed klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist era. The klismos influence is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some special kinds of notable uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be traced as well as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged folio of sketches and artworks has been protected, with images of the interior and outside of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing familiarity to representations of past chairs.
As was the case in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair can be found both with and without arms however never without a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, however, the stiles are delicately curved by the arms so as to conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a chairback). Together, all three limbs are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of this back splat exercised an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could only to a restricted extent support corner joints (and are loose into the bargain) represent a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs likely were kept only for elderly family members, for they were held in great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The structure and decoration issues are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual parts do not look to have been affixed by either glue or screws, but had been mortised onto one another and fixed in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Paintings project a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same time, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is evidenced in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair may also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat adheres 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 on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of rather thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and finer items may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and found favour 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 reknowned 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 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
For a great deal on office chairs in Brisbane contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
Leave a Reply