Archive for the ‘Quit smoking aids’ Category
Stop Smoking Safely with an E Cigarette
This January close to 34 million American smokers will make the New Year’s resolution to stop smoking. This time like any other year only roughly 1.3 million of these smokers will succeed in quitting. Perhaps you and people you know have tried to quit before. People try and fail many times. So why does everyone want to quit but only a fraction actually succeed? The simple answer is many don’t know how to quit or don’t have the resolve. Studies prove that one of the most important characteristics of a successful quitter is their belief that they have the power to quit smoking. What if you can’t quit? What if there was a way to smoke safer without quiting?
What if you decide to make positive change, taking simple steps towards quitting and bettering your situation? E Cigarettes are the latest tool to assist you to start taking control and preparing yourself to quit smoking. E Cigarettes look just like cigarettes, feel just like cigarettes, taste just like cigarettes, but they come without the variety of health hazards of regular smoking like toxic smoke.
An electronic cigarette or “e cigarette ” is a tiny battery-powered device shaped like a cigarette that gives you a controlled amount of nicotine similar to an inhaler. The device uses a heating mechanism to vaporize a a special liquid nicotine called E Liquid. The harmless vapor mist also provides flavor and a physical sensation close to that of inhaled tobacco smoke. No tobacco is actually involved while operating the e cigarette . When you puff the e cigarette, a electronic sensor detects air flow and activates a heating element that vaporizes the nicotine solution stored in the mouth of the e cigarette A red LED on the opposite end of the e cigarette fires during inhalation, creating the the firey glow of smoking a traditional cigarette.
So why are e cigarettes better for you?
Scientific studies show that there are approximately 4,000 chemical compounds released when burning a regular tobacco cigarette and close to 60 to 70 known carcinogens and toxins eventually causing life threatening cancer. The e cigarette liquid nicotine contains 10 to 20 ingredients, which varies based on the manufacturer, and emits harmless vapor. No second hand smoke production means that you will not be hurting others around you with carbon monoxide. You can smoke almost anywhere, even in public and sometimes otherwise restricted locations. This method of smoking is clean and leaves no trace odors on your body, home, car, or clothes. Imagine no longer needing an ash tray or smelling like one.
E Cigarettes operate using refillable cartridges in varying nicotine levels such as high, medium, low, and zero nicotine as well as enjoyable flavors. This enables you to slowly lower your nicotine intake and make that first move towards quitting. Independent testing has revealed the everyday smoker takes in right around 15 puffs of a regular cigarette. Based on this figure, a filled cartridge is just about equal to about 10 normal cigarettes, but this could vary based on the brand’s make and model. Varying reports indicate that it changes based on how much the e-cigarette is operated durning the day and how deeply the user inhales. One bottle of E Liquid Nicotine can be used to refill the cartridges several times over. So based on the spiraling expenses and taxes incurred with regular tobacco you should experience massive savings along with great health benefits.
Modern manufacturers are so confident you will make the switch they are even offering risk free trials of their top of the line e cigarette starting kits so you will experience the benefits first hand for just covering shipping costs. When you add up all the benefits you’ll surely realize that even if you can’t give up smokingright now, you owe it to yourself to explore this safer and cleaner electronic smoking alternative.
The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture items, the chair might be the paramount one. While most other pieces (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is said here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to complex pieces for example a bench and sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously labeled.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic craft; it was historically an indicator of social placement. From the old royal courts there were social connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. In the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior status, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In its furniture purpose, the chair is utilised for a range of various models. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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 modern lifestyle has developed unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds have changed to conform to evolving human uses. For its particular link with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when being utilised. Although it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the different elements of the chair were given names according to the parts of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental job of the chair is to support a body, its worth is tested principally for how well it measures up to this practical function. In the structure of the chair, the designer is restricted within the static regulations and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There were civilizations that made iconic chair types, expressive of the premier task in the arenas of handling and creativity. From those civilisations, special note should 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 result of expert scheme, were seen from tombs. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs formed not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular design was created. There was from our knowledge no notable differentiation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The only variation lied in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was crafted to be an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool that kind existed for much later points in time. But the stool then also was created as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today be found, 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 were made in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were created of wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared again somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of these is the folding stool, made from ashwood, found at Guldh j (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient fossil still in form but found in a variety of pictorial objects. The iconic kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them can be visible. These odd legs were most likely to have been manufactured out of bent wood and were as such needed to bear great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely durable and were clearly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; evidence of statues of seated Romans display designs of a thicker and in appearance kind of less intricately crafted klismos. Both types, the light or heavy, were revived within the Classicist era. The klismos influence is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular types of profound uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be tracked as far as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618 907) an unscathed series of drawings and paintings had been preserved, showing the interiors and exterior of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing resemblance to representations of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was designed both with or without arms although always with the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles are marginally curved over the arms to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). Together, the three areas were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of this back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would merely to a limited extent support corner joints (as well as being loose in the result) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs presumably were reserved for elderly persons in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic aspects are combined in a style that is all at once both na ve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been joined together by either glue or screws, but have been mortised with 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 name on the chair. Artworks display a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same period, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be evidenced in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely 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 of styles that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750 spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket designs may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 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 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 Eug ne Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaud 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 M tro.
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 reception desks in Brisbane contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
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The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture items, the chair might be the paramount one. While most other pieces (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is said here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to complex pieces for example a bench and sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously labeled.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic craft; it was historically an indicator of social placement. From the old royal courts there were social connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. In the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior status, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In its furniture purpose, the chair is utilised for a range of various models. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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 modern lifestyle has developed unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds have changed to conform to evolving human uses. For its particular link with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when being utilised. Although it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the different elements of the chair were given names according to the parts of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental job of the chair is to support a body, its worth is tested principally for how well it measures up to this practical function. In the structure of the chair, the designer is restricted within the static regulations and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There were civilizations that made iconic chair types, expressive of the premier task in the arenas of handling and creativity. From those civilisations, special note should 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 result of expert scheme, were seen from tombs. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs formed not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular design was created. There was from our knowledge no notable differentiation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The only variation lied in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was crafted to be an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool that kind existed for much later points in time. But the stool then also was created as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today be found, 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 were made in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were created of wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared again somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of these is the folding stool, made from ashwood, found at Guldh j (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient fossil still in form but found in a variety of pictorial objects. The iconic kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them can be visible. These odd legs were most likely to have been manufactured out of bent wood and were as such needed to bear great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely durable and were clearly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; evidence of statues of seated Romans display designs of a thicker and in appearance kind of less intricately crafted klismos. Both types, the light or heavy, were revived within the Classicist era. The klismos influence is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular types of profound uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be tracked as far as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618 907) an unscathed series of drawings and paintings had been preserved, showing the interiors and exterior of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing resemblance to representations of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was designed both with or without arms although always with the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles are marginally curved over the arms to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). Together, the three areas were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of this back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would merely to a limited extent support corner joints (as well as being loose in the result) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs presumably were reserved for elderly persons in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic aspects are combined in a style that is all at once both na ve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been joined together by either glue or screws, but have been mortised with 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 name on the chair. Artworks display a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same period, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be evidenced in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely 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 of styles that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750 spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket designs may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 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 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 Eug ne Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaud 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 M tro.
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 reception desks in Brisbane contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
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The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture items, the chair might be the paramount one. While most other pieces (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is said here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to complex pieces for example a bench and sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously labeled.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic craft; it was historically an indicator of social placement. From the old royal courts there were social connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. In the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior status, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In its furniture purpose, the chair is utilised for a range of various models. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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 modern lifestyle has developed unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds have changed to conform to evolving human uses. For its particular link with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when being utilised. Although it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the different elements of the chair were given names according to the parts of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental job of the chair is to support a body, its worth is tested principally for how well it measures up to this practical function. In the structure of the chair, the designer is restricted within the static regulations and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There were civilizations that made iconic chair types, expressive of the premier task in the arenas of handling and creativity. From those civilisations, special note should 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 result of expert scheme, were seen from tombs. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs formed not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular design was created. There was from our knowledge no notable differentiation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The only variation lied in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was crafted to be an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool that kind existed for much later points in time. But the stool then also was created as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today be found, 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 were made in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were created of wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared again somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of these is the folding stool, made from ashwood, found at Guldh j (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient fossil still in form but found in a variety of pictorial objects. The iconic kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them can be visible. These odd legs were most likely to have been manufactured out of bent wood and were as such needed to bear great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely durable and were clearly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; evidence of statues of seated Romans display designs of a thicker and in appearance kind of less intricately crafted klismos. Both types, the light or heavy, were revived within the Classicist era. The klismos influence is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular types of profound uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be tracked as far as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618 907) an unscathed series of drawings and paintings had been preserved, showing the interiors and exterior of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing resemblance to representations of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was designed both with or without arms although always with the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles are marginally curved over the arms to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). Together, the three areas were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of this back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would merely to a limited extent support corner joints (as well as being loose in the result) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs presumably were reserved for elderly persons in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic aspects are combined in a style that is all at once both na ve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been joined together by either glue or screws, but have been mortised with 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 name on the chair. Artworks display a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same period, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be evidenced in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely 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 of styles that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750 spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket designs may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 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 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 Eug ne Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaud 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 M tro.
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.
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The History of the Chair
Out of each of the furniture items, the chair might be the paramount one. While most other pieces (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is said here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to complex pieces for example a bench and sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously labeled.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic craft; it was historically an indicator of social placement. From the old royal courts there were social connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. In the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior status, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set platform.
In its furniture purpose, the chair is utilised for a range of various models. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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 modern lifestyle has developed unique chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair kinds have changed to conform to evolving human uses. For its particular link with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when being utilised. Although it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the different elements of the chair were given names according to the parts of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental job of the chair is to support a body, its worth is tested principally for how well it measures up to this practical function. In the structure of the chair, the designer is restricted within the static regulations and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.
The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There were civilizations that made iconic chair types, expressive of the premier task in the arenas of handling and creativity. From those civilisations, special note should 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 result of expert scheme, were seen from tombs. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs formed not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular design was created. There was from our knowledge no notable differentiation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The only variation lied in the complex ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was crafted to be an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool that kind existed for much later points in time. But the stool then also was created as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today be found, 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 were made in the form of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were created of wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared again somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of these is the folding stool, made from ashwood, found at Guldh j (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient fossil still in form but found in a variety of pictorial objects. The iconic kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location by Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them can be visible. These odd legs were most likely to have been manufactured out of bent wood and were as such needed to bear great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely durable and were clearly indicated.
The Romans embued the Greek designs; evidence of statues of seated Romans display designs of a thicker and in appearance kind of less intricately crafted klismos. Both types, the light or heavy, were revived within the Classicist era. The klismos influence is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular types of profound uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China cannot be tracked as far as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618 907) an unscathed series of drawings and paintings had been preserved, showing the interiors and exterior of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Preserved also of the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing resemblance to representations of past chairs.
Just the same as in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was designed both with or without arms although always with the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles are marginally curved over the arms to suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). Together, the three areas were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of this back splat then had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would merely to a limited extent support corner joints (as well as being loose in the result) are a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges a left over as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs presumably were reserved for elderly persons in the family, for they were given great respect.
The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic aspects are combined in a style that is all at once both na ve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been joined together by either glue or screws, but have been mortised with 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 name on the chair. Artworks display a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same period, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be evidenced in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely 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 of styles that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750 spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket designs may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.
English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 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 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 Eug ne Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaud 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 M tro.
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 reception desks in Brisbane contact Fast Office Furniture today and check our specials.
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