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From all the furniture items, the chair might be the most imperative. While most other pieces (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is regarded here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to derivative makes including the bench and sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently defined.

The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or aesthetic piece; it historically is semiotic of social placement. Within the historical royal courts there were plain distinctions between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to make do with a stool. From the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior status, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised level.

As a furniture purpose, the chair holds a wealth of various makes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our modern lifestyle has developed unique chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair shapes have been perfected to conform to evolving human desires. Due to its particular connection with man, the chair appears to its full advantage only when being utilised. Though it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly judged by a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter require one another. Thus the different parts of the chair have been named corresponding to the elements of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the clear work of a chair is to support the body, its credit is valued primarily by how completely it does measure up to this practical purpose. In the structure of a chair, the builder is restricted under certain static regulation and principal measurements. Through these boundaries, however, the chair maker has large freedom.

The history of the chair covers dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that have created iconic chair types, seen of the principal work in the areas of handling and creativity. Among these such civilisations, particular mention 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 objects of masterful craft, are now found from tomb findings. The first of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs formed similar to those of some animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular design was made. There seemed to be no noteworthy differentiation between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical populace. The only difference lied in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the selection of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was designed as an easily carried seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the stool persevered during much later periods of time. But the stool also played the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can now be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were made out of wood. The simplistic manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, can be seen at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this type is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which can now be found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient fossil still in form but found in a wealth of pictorial objects. The best known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those were shown. These strange legs were likely to have been executed in bent wood and were in that case had extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore super strong and were clearly indicated.

The Romans embued the Greek style; evidence of casts of seated Romans are evidence of a heavier and in appearance slightly less delicately crafted klismos. Both kinds, the light and heavy, were revived in the Classicist epoch. The klismos design is used in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some special types of notable individuality around Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as well as in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of drawings and paintings has been preserved, showing the insides and outer parts of Chinese buildings and the kinds of furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing resemblance to pictures of ancient chairs.

As in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been designed both with and without arms although never without the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one design, it has been found, the stiles were marginally curved on top of the arms in order to fit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its back). Each of the three sections were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of the back splat then had an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that just to a particular extent stabilise corner joints (and then were loose into the bargain) indicate a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. All members are round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs most likely were reserved for elderly members of the family, for they were greatly respected.

The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and decorative aspects are combined in a way that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not seem to have been adjoined by use of either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and locked into 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. Works of art display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same period, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is found in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair might also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not certain that the style actually originated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and grants 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 made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of rather thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and finer chairs might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used as an alternative to upholstery.

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

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

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