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From each of the furniture needs, the chair may be of the most importance. While most other pieces (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair must be used here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to complex chairs like 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 distinuishable.

The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or aesthetic creation; it is also symbolic of social hierarchy. At the old royal courts there were social differences between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to sit on a stool. In the recent century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as an identifier of superior status, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised floor.

As its furniture creation, the chair is utilised for a range of various makes. There are chairs created to fit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Contemporary lifestyle has designated special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair forms have adapted to fit to differing human desires. From its close association with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when in employ. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is seen best and judged best by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the several areas of the chair have been labeled likened to the elements of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the basic purpose of your chair is to support a body, its value is evaluated primarily on how well it does fulfill this practical job. Within the design of the chair, the chair maker is bound for the static regulations and principal measurements. Inside these limits, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.

The history of the chair extends over a period of several thousand years. There existed cultures that have created distinctive chair forms, expressions of the foremost work in the industries of skill and aesthetics. From such societies, 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of careful make, were seen from tomb findings. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted like those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular construction was made. There was apparently no noteworthy change between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary people. The only change was in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed to be an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the stool persevered until much later days. But the stool then also existed in the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can already be noted, 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 constructed in the form of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are formed with wood. The easy make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, came up but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of those is the folding stool, made from ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient object still existing but as seen in a wealth of pictorial items. The better known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them would be seen. These unique legs were presumably manufactured with bent wood and were therefore bore a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super durable and were plainly indicated.

The Romans borrowed from the Greek designs; evidence of statues of seated Romans offer chairs of a heavier and in appearance rather more crudely built klismos. Both kinds, the light and the heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos style can be evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of marked iconicism in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The past of the chair in China can not be followed as far back as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of drawings and artworks has been kept, showing the insides and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a collection of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing likeness to representations of ancient chairs.

As were the designs in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair can be seen both with and without arms however never without its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one type, it must be said, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms in order to fit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its chairback). Together, all three parts had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of the Chinese back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would merely to a particular ability reinforce corner joints (and are loose into the bargain) represent a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or have rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs probably were reserved for elderly family members, for they were held in great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of both furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been put together with either glue or screws, but had been mortised on one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Artworks show a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same time, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is 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 style of chair is also seen 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. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself with its shapely proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of quite thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive examples can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engraving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.

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

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

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

In cheaper brands of inferior workmanship, bourgeois chairs of the 19th century carried on the traditions of the 17th and 18th centuries. The only real innovations were the bentwood (wood that has been bent and shaped) chairs in beech that became popular all over the world and were still made in the 20th century. Around 1900 the continental Art Nouveau and Jugendstil styles (French and German styles characterized by organic foliate forms, sinuous lines, and non-geometric forms), and the Arts and Crafts movement in England (established by the English poet and decorator William Morris to reintroduce idealized standards of medieval craftsmanship), gave rise to original chair designs by Eugène Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaudí in Spain, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland. These new furniture styles did not exercise wide, let alone decisive, influence. The Art Nouveau chairs designed by the French architect Hector Guimard, for example, are collector’s pieces, but his name is known to a broader public only because of his fanciful entrances to the Paris Métro.

Modern
After World War I, the Bauhaus school in Germany became a creative centre for revolutionary thinking, resulting, for example, in tubular steel chairs designed by the architects Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and others. During World War II, the aircraft industry accelerated the development of laminated wood and molded plastic furniture. The dominant chair forms of this period go back to designs by Alvar Aalto, Bruno Mathsson, and Charles and Ray Eames. Rapid technical developments, in conjunction with an ever-increasing interest in human-factors engineering, or ergonomics, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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