Australian Travel

Out of all furniture forms, the chair may be the imperative one. While most of the other objects (except the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is meant to be said here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to developed forms for example the bench and sofa, which can be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently labeled.

The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and aesthetic object; it is historically a signifier of social placement. In the historical royal courts there were clear distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to squat on a stool. Since the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen an identifier of superior standing, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated level.

In a furniture form, the chair can be used for a range of different purposes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the olden days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and 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.

Our contemporary lifestyle has developed special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types have evolved to suit to different human desires. Because of its significant connection with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when in use. Whereas it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and tested by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter need each other. Thus the several limbs of a chair have been given names corresponding to the parts of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the basic function of your chair is to support the body, its worth is evaluated firstly on how completely it does measure up to this practical role. Within the manufacture of a chair, the designer is bound within certain static regulation and principal measurements. Under these restrictions, however, the chair builder has large freedom.

The history of the chair covered an era of several thousand years. There existed cultures that held unique chair types, seen of the leading work in the arenas of craft and design. Among these cultures, special 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of expert craft, are now a finding 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 similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular construction was created. There was apparently no significant differentiation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular peasantry. The only difference exists in the level of ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was manufactured for an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool the type persisted for much later days. But the stool also then was created for the task of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can today be seen, 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 made in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats were created of wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, was seen again but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this kind is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient fossil still around but as in a trove of pictorial items. The archetype is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which are displayed. These creative legs were probably manufactured out of bent wood and were therefore put under extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very stable and were clearly signified.

The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; some models of seated Romans show chairs of a denser and which appear to be a kind of crudely constructed klismos. Both types, the light and heavy, were revived within the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair is used in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some particular kinds of marked iconicism of Denmark and Sweden around 1800.

China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be charted as long as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full serial of sketches and artworks has been protected, displaying the insides and outer parts of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing similarity to images of past chairs.

As in Egypt, two fundamental chair forms existed in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is seen both with or without arms though always having its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one design, however, the stiles were slightly curved above the arms to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). All three sections are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of the back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would merely to a limited extent embolden corner joints (and then are loose into the bargain) are an element solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—references perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs probably were only for older individuals, for they were held in great respect.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decoration elements are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the manner that the individual parts do not look to have been held together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Paintings display a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same era, had the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is evidenced in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not believed that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by its elegant 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 style—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of relatively thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more upmarket examples might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used instead of upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the preference 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 reknowned 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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