Business Podcasting Blog

From all the furniture items, the chair might be paramount. While most of the other forms (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair was regarded here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to derivative items for example the bench or sofa, which may be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinuishable.

The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or aesthetic craft; it is historically a symbol of social placement. From the past royal courts there were significant signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to use a stool. During the 20th century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior position, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on an elevated floor.

As a furniture form, the chair can be employed for a range of different makes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Modern living has derived particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair kinds has been evolved to fit to changing human requirements. Due to its close importance with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when used. Although it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is understood best and judged best with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter require each other. Thus the different elements of a chair have been labeled likened to the elements of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the fundamental work of your chair is to support the human body, its credit is judged basically for how completely it fulfills this practical use. Within the structure of a chair, the designer is restricted under the static regulations and principal measurements. In these limits, however, the chair creator has great freedom.

The history of the chair was a period of several thousand years. There were peoples that had individual chair types, as expressive of the highest object in the areas of handling and aesthetics. Within these such peoples, a mention must 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 result of expert design, are today known from findings made in tombs. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs designed not unlike those of a designated animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a stable triangular structure was created. There appeared to be no noteworthy change between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The only difference exists in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the selection of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was crafted to be an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool that form stayed til much later times. But the stool also then was made as the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can today be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats are formed from wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, reappeared somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most well known of this kind is the folding stool, made of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient specimen still in form but as seen from a trove of pictorial objects. The most recognisable is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those are shown. These unique legs were presumed to be manufactured of bent wood and were probably subjected to extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very stable and were visibly drawn.

The Romans emulated the Greek designs; quite a few models of seated Romans offer designs of a denser and in appearance rather crudely designed klismos. Both styles, the light and heavy, were revived during the Classicist period. The klismos design is found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some brands of profound iconicism around Denmark and Sweden around 1800.

China
The past of the chair in China cannot be charted as well as that of Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of images and paintings had been kept, detailing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are some chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing likeness to styles of older chairs.

Same as in Egypt, there existed two particular chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair has been constructed both with and without arms although always with a square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to firm the back. In one type, however, the stiles are lightly curved by the arms so as to fit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Each of the three parts are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of this back splat then had a foundation for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could merely to a particular capability embolden corner joints (and then are loose to top it off) signify a design signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or have rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs likely were reserved only for the senior members of the family, for they were greatly respected.

The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is generally provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic aspects are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual members do not seem to have been held together by either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and held in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Works of art show a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is seen in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this design of chair can also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the form actually was born in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in vast amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself with its shapely 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 of forms—that is, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat suits 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 over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of quite thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more expensive examples might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the favourite 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 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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