From each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be the imperative one. While most of the other objects (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is regarded here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to complex forms for example a bench and 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 clearly labeled.

The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic craft; it is also a signifier of social rank. In the historical royal courts there were important connotations between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to cope with a stool. In the 20th century, a director’s or manager’s chair has become iconic of superior position, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set floor.

In a furniture form, the chair is utilised for a number of various models. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the past there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our contemporary lifestyle has derived particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair shapes have adapted to match to evolving human desires. Because of its significant importance with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when being used. Whereas it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really seen best and judged best by a person using it, for chair and sitter need one another. Thus the various areas of the chair are given names according to the names of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the obvious role of your chair is to support our body, its worth is valued primarily from how fully it does fulfill this practical function. Within the creation of the chair, the chair maker is restricted within certain static rules and principal measurements. In these regulations, however, the chair builder has large freedom.

The history of the chair lasts over dates of several thousand years. There existed peoples that held unique chair forms, as expressive of the topmost craft in the arenas of skill and creativity. Out of these civilisations, particular mention 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of skilled scheme, were found from tomb findings. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs crafted like those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular design was obtained. There appeared to be no particular difference between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The simple variation exists in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed for an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the form persevered for much later periods of time. But the stool also was created as the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can already be noted, 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 are made in the shape of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are made from wood. The easy build of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, came again but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of these is the folding stool, made of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient item still around but as seen from a wealth of pictorial items. The archetype is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which would be seen. These unusual legs were likely to be manufactured of bent wood and were as such put under great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very stable and were plainly drawn.

The Romans adopted the Greek design; designs of models of seated Romans show chairs of a thicker and in appearance somewhat less intricately built klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were seen again within the Classicist period. The klismos chair can be found in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some kinds of profound uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be followed as well as that of Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of sketches and artworks had been preserved, with images of the insides and exterior of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing resemblance to designs of previous chairs.

Just like in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair can be seen both with and without arms though always with the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one kind, it has been found, the stiles are lightly curved on top of the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Together, the three sections were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of this back splat then had an introduction for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could merely to a particular capability support corner joints (and then were loose in the result) signify a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited seat. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a habit of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs probably were allowed only for senior persons, for they were greatly respected.

The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the overall effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The manufacture and decoration elements are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the fact that the individual items do not look to have been constructed with either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Paintings project a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same time, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair might also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that was, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are constructed from wood of rather thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket chairs may be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carvings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used rather than upholstery.

English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and found favour in many parts of the Continent, had no parallel in England. Prior to 1740, the most commonly used wood was walnut; thereafter, and for the rest of the century, it was mahogany. Walnut, though beautiful in hue, was soft and therefore less suited to wood carving than to rounded, curving forms. Outer surfaces, such as the back and seat frame, were usually veneered. During the walnut period, highly overstuffed armchairs, covered with leather or embroidered material, were also developed. The best upholstery of this period is precisely and firmly modelled and accentuated by braiding or tacks. When imports of mahogany became common, no specifically new chair designs appeared, but the character of the woodwork changed. Mahogany, having a firmer, closer grain, could be cut thinner, which meant that individual parts of the chair could be more slender in shape. Mahogany also lent itself better to carving than walnut. Carving was concentrated more on the arms and back than on the legs, which as a rule were straight and smooth with chamfered (bevelled) edges and molding. There was a wealth of variety in chairback designs, featuring elegant, pierced, vase-shaped splats or two upright posts connected by horizontal slats (ladderback).

Alongside the French Rococo chair and the best English chairs in walnut and mahogany, the stick-back chair was relatively unaffected by the stylistic changes of the day. Originally a medieval form, known, for example, from paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and still found in mid-20th century in the churches and inns of southern Europe, the stick-back chair (in all of its variations) consists basically of a solid, saddle-shaped seat into which the legs, back staves, and possibly the armrests are directly mortised. This typically peasant form underwent a renewal and a process of refinement in England and America during the 18th century. Under the name Windsor chair (a term that seems to have been used for the first time in 1731) or Philadelphia chair, it became well-known and was widely distributed throughout the world.

Late 18th to 20th century
In the Neoclassical period, no basic changes took place in chair forms, but legs became straight and dimensions lighter. Backs in the shape of classical vases replaced the fanciful outlines of the Rococo period. Around 1800, freely executed imitations of Greek and Roman chairs of the klismos type, with curved legs and backrest, appeared. French chairs of the Empire period, executed in dark mahogany and embellished with ornate bronze mounts, created a ponderous effect.

In cheaper 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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