Ninja Pirate Books

Out of each of the furniture objects, the chair could be the primary one. While many other items (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair can be used 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 clearly labeled.

The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic artwork; it is historically semiotic of social hierarchy. From the past royal courts there were important signifiers between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to utilise a stool. Since the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as an identifier of superior status, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.

As a furniture creation, the chair holds a range of different makes. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); during 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 up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Modern living has derived unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has been adapted to fit to different human needs. For its unique importance with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when being used. Although it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood best and judged best by a person using it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the various areas of a chair are given names likened to the parts of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the simple function of your chair is to support our body, its credit is valued basically on how well it measures up to this practical function. Within the design of the chair, the maker is bound under particular static law and principal measurements. Within these regulations, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.

The history of the chair extends over an epoch of several thousand years. There existed cultures that held unique chair forms, as expressive of the highest endeavour in the arenas of craft and design. From those civilisations, individual note should 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of expert craft, are seen from tombs. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs shaped not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular construction was crafted. There was from our understanding no particular difference between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The main variation lies in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the selection of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was developed to be an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this stool stayed around for much later periods. But the stool then took on the use of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the form of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are created of wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, came again some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this type is the folding stool, made of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient item still in form but as seen in a large amount of pictorial evidence. The better known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs were displayed. These odd legs were probably manufactured from bent wood and were likely to have been bore huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely stable and were visibly pointed out.

The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; quite a few statues of seated Romans offer chairs of a heavier and are a slightly less delicately constructed klismos. Both styles, the light or heavy, were popularised during the Classicist period. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some special brands of marked uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be traced as far back as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of sketches and paintings had been preserved, detailing the interior and outer parts of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a number of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing resemblance to pictures of older chairs.

As were the designs in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be found both with or without arms however always having its square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles were delicately curved over the arms in order to suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a chairback). Together, all three areas are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the design of the back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that just to a particular limit embolden corner joints (and then are loose into the bargain) are a feature solely 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 have rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs likely were reserved for elderly persons, for they were greatly respected.

The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration issues are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been constructed with either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Artworks display a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only 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 similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same era, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is found in engravings of interiors 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 type of chair is also seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and expensive 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 was, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat suits 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 tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of rather thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and finer designs may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.

English chairs in the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popular 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 popularised 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 office chairs in Sydney contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.