TCAM

Out of all furniture needs, the chair might be primary. While many other objects (save for the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair was said here in the general sense, from stool to throne to developed chairs for example a bench or sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently definitive.

The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or an aesthetic artwork; it can also be a signifier of social placement. Within the historical royal courts there were significant differences between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to make do with a stool. In the recent century, the director’s and manager’s chair has risen an identifier of superior standing, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher level.

In its furniture purpose, the chair ranges from a wealth of various makes. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the olden days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used 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 make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our modern lifestyle has demanded particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds have been evolved to suit to growing human desires. From its unique connection with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when in use. Though it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly regarded by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the various elements of the chair are named according to the areas of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the original function of the chair is to support a body, its worth is valued generally on how well it does measure up to this practical use. Within the creation of the chair, the designer is limited in certain static laws and principal measurements. Inside these rules, however, the chair builder has large freedom.

The history of the chair extends over an epoch of several thousand years. There are civilizations that made iconic chair forms, as expressions of the premier work in the arenas of craft and design. Within these cultures, individual mention 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 structures of skilled make, are today known from findings made in tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular construction was created. There was in our view no notable change from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The main change lies in the complex ornamentation, in the selection of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was crafted to be an easily stored seat for army. As a camp stool the kind stayed around for much later points in time. But the stool also then was created as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be noted, 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 are in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded because the seats were formed out of wood. The easy make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, was seen again but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of these is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not from any ancient object still in form but as seen from a large amount of pictorial objects. The most well known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them could be shown. These unusual legs were presumably executed out of bent wood and were in that case had a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely solid and were clearly signified.

The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; designs of models of seated Romans show designs of a heavier and are a somewhat more crudely constructed klismos. Both features, light and heavy, were seen again in the Classicist period. The klismos style is found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some kinds of notable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as well as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of images and paintings had been preserved, with images of the inside and outer parts of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing resemblance to images of older chairs.

Just the same as in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been seen both with or without arms however always having its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, it has been seen, the stiles had been slightly curved above the arms for the purpose of suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). All three limbs had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of this back splat exercised an inspiration for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would only to a restricted capability embolden corner joints (and are loose in the result) signify a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have had a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs likely were reserved only for senior persons, for they were greatly respected.

The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have come to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of both furniture designs is stylized. The structure and decoration aspects are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been fixed together by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Paintings project a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same time, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be seen in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in vast quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by its elegant 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 form—that was, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated 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 strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of quite thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket items may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in design 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 won 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 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

For a great deal on office storage in Melbourne contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.