Of all furniture pieces, the chair could be primary. While the majority of other items (except the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is regarded here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to developed types such as the bench or sofa, which should be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinuishable.

The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic item; it historically is a symbol of social standing. From the past royal courts there were significant distinctions between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to cope with a stool. Since the last century, a director’s or manager’s chair has risen a signifier of superior position, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on a raised level.

In a furniture construction, the chair encompasses a wealth of different models. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, 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 modern lifestyle has derived particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair types has adapted to fit to differing human desires. Due to its unique importance with man, the chair appears to its full significance only when in use. Whereas it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there are items inside or not, a chair is really seen and tested with a person using it, for chair and sitter require one another. Thus the several limbs of a chair were given labels as the elements of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the primary role of your chair is to support our human body, its worth is evaluated firstly for how well it does measure up to this practical role. In the design of the chair, the builder is limited with certain static law and principal measurements. Under these boundaries, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.

The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that had made distinctive chair types, seen of the highest work in the spheres of handling and design. Within those cultures, a note needs to 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 scheme, are now seen from discoveries made in tombs. One of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed similar to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular form was made. There seems to be no particular differentiation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular non-royals. The main difference exists in the kind of ornamentation, in the choice of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was made as an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool the stool continued til much later periods of time. But the stool then was created as the character of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool being forgotten. This can now be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are worked from wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, was then seen some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of these is the folding stool, made of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient item still around but seen in a large amount of pictorial items. The iconic kind is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those would be visible. These unusual legs were understood to have been created in bent wood and were thus subjected to a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very durable and were overtly pointed out.

The Romans embued the Greek chair; existing models of seated Romans offer chairs of a denser and apparently somewhat more crudely built klismos. Both styles, the light or the heavy, were brought back during the Classicist era. The klismos chair can be evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some special brands of considerable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The history of the chair in China cannot be tracked as far back as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of drawings and artworks has been kept, detailing the interiors and outer parts of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are a number of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing likeness to styles of previous chairs.

As in Egypt, two particular chair forms existed in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair is seen both with or without arms though never without its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one design, however, the stiles are lightly curved on top of the arms in order to conform correctly to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). Together, the three limbs were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of the Chinese back splat later had a foundation for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that merely to a limited capability support corner joints (and then were loose to top that off) signify a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have had a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs presumably were kept for the senior people, for they were given great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resultant effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and aesthetic elements are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual parts do not seem to have been fixed together by either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and fixed in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Paintings show a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, in the same period, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be seen in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair can also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not decided that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in vast amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of relatively thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more expensive items can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used instead of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and found favour in several 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
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 storage in Sydney contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.