ADF News

Out of all furniture items, the chair might be the most important. While many other objects (save for the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair must be viewed here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further forms like the bench and sofa, which may be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinguished.

The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece; it is also an indicator of social standing. From the past royal courts there were plain distinctions between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. In the last century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has become a symbol of superior dignity, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated floor.

As its furniture construction, the chair can be utilised for a wealth of different models. There are chairs manufactured to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs 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. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our contemporary lifestyle has derived unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair types have been adapted to conform to different human uses. From its unique connection with man, the chair comes to its full significance only when in use. Although it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really understood and judged by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the various areas of the chair were labeled corresponding to the areas of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the obvious purpose of the chair is to support our human body, its value is judged primarily for how fully it fulfills this practical use. In the creation of a chair, the chair maker is limited under certain static rules and principal measurements. Within these restrictions, however, the chair designer has great freedom.

The history of the chair lasted over a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of cultures that created distinctive chair shapes, as seen of the premier craft in the industries of handling and aesthetics. Within these civilisations, special mention 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of masterful design, are seen from tomb discoveries. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have had four legs designed similar to those of an animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular construction was obtained. There was apparently no particular variation from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The real change was in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed as an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that chair stayed around for much later days. But the stool also took on the task of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool being forgotten. This can now be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats were made with wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric held between them, is seen again somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient object still around but as seen from a trove of pictorial items. The best recognised is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs are shown. These unusual legs were understood to be crafted out of bent wood and were in that case needed to bear extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super solid and were plainly drawn.

The Romans emulated the Greek style; a number of statues of seated Romans are chairs of a thicker and apparently somewhat crudely constructed klismos. Both types, the light and the heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist era. The klismos style is used in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in special types of considerable uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far back as in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken serial of sketches and paintings had been preserved, detailing the interiors and outside of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are some chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing similarity to styles of ancient chairs.

Just as in Egypt, there were two iconic chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair was seen both with or without arms although never without a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one image, it must be said, the stiles are marginally curved over the arms to sit right with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a back). Together, the three limbs were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of the back splat then had an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a limited extent support corner joints (and then were loose in the result) indicate a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have had a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs probably were allowed only for older people, for they were given great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is understood to have taken to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of these two furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decoration elements are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the manner that the individual parts do not look to have been held together by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and held in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Works of art display a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, in the same time, possessed 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 the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not determined that the innovation actually was born in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely proportions and delicate 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 was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and allows 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 conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are made from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and finer items can be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used in place of upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and found 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 brands 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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