The Slagosphere

Of all furniture forms, the chair may be the paramount one. While many other pieces (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be said here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed pieces for example the bench or sofa, which may be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinuishable.

The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support or aesthetic item; it was historically symbolic of social standing. In the past royal courts there were clear differences between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. Since the recent century, the director’s or manager’s chair has risen an identifier of superior position, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a higher platform.

As its furniture form, the chair is utilised for a variety of various makes. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Modern living has developed unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types has adapted to match to differing human uses. Because of its significant association with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when in employ. Though it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly judged with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter require the other. Thus the different areas of the chair are labeled according to the parts of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the fundamental function of a chair is to support your body, its value is judged primarily for how fully it measures up to this practical purpose. Within the construction of the chair, the maker is restricted for certain static legislation and principal measurements. Inside these limitations, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.

The history of the chair extends over an epoch of several thousand years. There were cultures that had iconic chair forms, as expressions of the leading work in the areas of technique and aesthetics. Out of these civilisations, particular note can 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 upshot of masterful craft, were a finding from tomb findings. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs crafted similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular form was made. There was to our knowledge no particular differentiation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The general change exists in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was made to be an easily packed seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the type continued til much later periods of time. But the stool also was created as the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can today be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the form of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats were formed with wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, came up but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this kind is the folding stool, from ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient object still around but as seen in a large amount of pictorial items. The best known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which were seen. These odd legs were probably manufactured with bent wood and were as such had a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super solid and were overtly drawn.

The Romans adopted the Greek designs; some statues of seated Romans display chairs of a more heavyset and which appear to be a kind of more crudely crafted klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist era. The klismos design can be seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular types of profound uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as well as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of drawings and artworks had been kept safe, detailing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an astonishing similarity to pictures of ancient chairs.

Same as in Egypt, there were two iconic chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was seen both with and without arms however always having its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one design, it must be said, the stiles could be slightly curved on top of the arms so as to sit correctly with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the back). All three limbs had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of the back splat had a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would merely to a particular limit stabilise corner joints (and furthermore are loose as a result) signify a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs presumably were reserved for elderly people in the family, for they were esteemed greatly.

The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of both furniture items is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic aspects are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been constructed by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and fixed in 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. Artworks display a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be found in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair can also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not believed that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more upmarket designs can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood could 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 sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the favourite 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 commonly known 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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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

Uncategorized office cahirs, office furniture