Ninja Pirate Books

Out of all furniture pieces, the chair might be primary. While most of the other forms (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair should be said here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to complex pieces such as the bench and sofa, which may be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously definitive.

The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support or an aesthetic object; it is historically a signifier of social place. Within the old royal courts there were clear signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. In the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has developed an indicator of superior status, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.

In its furniture form, the chair can be used for a number of various forms. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical form (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); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Modern day living has designated unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair shapes have evolved to conform to different human desires. Because of its unique association with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when in use. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be items inside or not, a chair is understood and regarded best with a person using it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the different limbs of a chair were named like the names of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the principal role of a chair is to support our human body, its value is judged primarily for how fully it fulfills this practical job. In the build of the chair, the designer is restricted under some static rules and principal measurements. Under these boundaries, however, the chair maker has large freedom.

The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There are cultures that had distinctive chair types, seen of the topmost task in the industries of skill and art. Among these such civilisations, special 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of expert craft, are now known from discoveries made in tombs. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted not unlike those of a designated animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular construction was crafted. There appears to be no particular change between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The real change existed in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was manufactured as an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool this chair persisted during much later days. But the stool also then was designed as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are made from wood. The easy build of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, came again at some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this type is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient fossil still extant but as in a large amount of pictorial objects. The best recognised is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which could be displayed. These unique legs were thought to have been manufactured of bent wood and were likely to have been had a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely strong and were clearly indicated.

The Romans emulated the Greek style; evidence of casts of seated Romans are designs of a thicker and apparently kind of less intricately constructed klismos. Both kinds, the light or the heavy, were popularised within the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence is known in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special types of notable uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as long as in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of drawings and works of art was kept safe, detailing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese homes and the kinds of furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are some chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing familiarity to representations of past chairs.

Just as in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been constructed both with and without arms however always having a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to give support to the back. In one style, it has been seen, the stiles had been lightly curved over the arms in order to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Together, all three parts were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the design of this back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a restricted capability support corner joints (and furthermore were loose in the bargain) signify a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or have rounded edges—a left over perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were reserved for the senior persons in the family, for they were held in great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of both furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been fixed together by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and locked into its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Works of art display a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same era, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be found in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair might also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not determined that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive amounts, 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 form asserts itself with its harmonious 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 of forms—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes such 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. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of fairly thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and finer designs can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.

English chairs in the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popular 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 popularised and was widely distributed throughout the world.

Late 18th to 20th century
In 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 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 office storage in Brisbane contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.