Max Mox Mix

From each of the furniture pieces, the chair might be the most important. While many other objects (save the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair was said here in the general sense, from stool to throne to complex makes like the bench and sofa, which can be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently definitive.

The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support or an aesthetic object; it historically was a symbol of social status. In the old royal courts there were social signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. Since the past century, the director’s or manager’s chair has developed a signifier of superior status, and in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on an elevated level.

As its furniture construction, the chair is used for a variety of various models. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have 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 for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our contemporary lifestyle has developed particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has been evolved to fit to differing human uses. Because of its unique link with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when being used. Although 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 judged by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter require one another. Thus the various parts of the chair are given labels likened to the areas of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the primary work of your chair is to support the human body, its worth is evaluated primarily by how well it does measure up to this practical use. Within the construction of a chair, the builder is limited with the static law and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.

The history of the chair is a period of several thousand years. There existed societies that had made iconic chair types, as seen of the leading craft in the spheres of craft and aesthetics. Out of those civilisations, special 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 objects of expert craft, were known from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs crafted as akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this design a stable triangular form was crafted. There was to our understanding no significant change between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The only difference exists in the kind of ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was crafted for an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that stool continued during much later days. But the stool then also took on the use of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are worked with wood. The plain structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, is seen some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of these is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not from any ancient fossil still existing but as found in a wealth of pictorial items. The iconic kind is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs could be visible. These odd legs were most likely to be manufactured in bent wood and were probably subjected to great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super strong and were overtly denoted.

The Romans adopted the Greek designs; quite a few casts of seated Romans are evidence of a denser and apparently rather crudely crafted klismos. Both kinds, the light and the heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist time. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some special brands of notable originality around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be followed as far back as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of images and works of art had been preserved, showing the interior and outer parts of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an amazing resemblance to images of older chairs.

As was the case in Egypt, two chair forms dominated in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That chair has been designed both with or without arms although never missing a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to support the back. In one kind, however, the stiles had been slightly curved above the arms for the purpose of fit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). Together, the three sections are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the design of a back splat had an inspiration for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could merely to a restricted ability stabilise corner joints (and furthermore are loose as well) indicate an element particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—references perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were kept only for senior members of the family, for they were given great respect.

The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is generally seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the overall effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decoration elements are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual parts do not appear to have been fixed by means of either glue or screws, but are 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 put its name on the chair. Works of art show a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same time, 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 interior of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair may also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not believed that the form actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat conforms 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 little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of fairly thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more expensive designs might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is occasionally used in place of upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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 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 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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