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Out of each of the furniture items, the chair may be the most important. While many other pieces (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be viewed here in the general sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds such as the bench and sofa, which might 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 intriguing as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic object; it is also symbolic of social hierarchy. From the old royal courts there were important connotations between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to utilise a stool. During the last century, a director’s and manager’s chair has become an identifier of superior position, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher floor.

In its furniture form, the chair is used for a wealth of various models. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Contemporary lifestyle has developed special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair shapes have evolved to match to evolving human requirements. From its unique association with man, the chair lives to its full meaning only when in use. Whereas it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly judged by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the individual areas of the chair are given labels as the limbs of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the original role of the chair is to support a human body, its worth is judged basically for how suitably it does measure up to this practical job. In the structure of the chair, the chair maker is bound within certain static regulations and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.

The history of the chair lasts over dates of several thousand years. There is evidence of civilizations that had made significant chair forms, as seen of the topmost task in the industries of craft and art. Among such societies, special 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of skilled make, are today found from tombs. The 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 akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular construction was crafted. There seems to be no significant difference between the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The only difference lies in the complexity of ornamentation, in the evidence of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was manufactured for an easily stored seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this stool continued during much later points. But the stool then existed in the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats were worked of wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this form is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient item still in form but as seen from a trove of pictorial objects. The better known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area near Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs were visible. These unique legs were considered to have been executed in bent wood and were likely to have been put under huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore extremely durable and were plainly indicated.

The Romans embued the Greek designs; evidence of models of seated Romans display chairs of a more heavyset and apparently rather crudely designed klismos. Both kinds, the light and heavy, were seen again within the Classicist time. The klismos chair can be found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special forms of considerable uniqueness around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The past of the chair in China can not be charted as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of drawings and works of art has been kept, showing the interior and exterior of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Also kept from the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that show an intriguing similarity to pictures of older chairs.

Same as in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair is constructed both with and without arms although always having the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles are delicately curved on top of the arms to fit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a back). Each of the three areas had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of the Chinese back splat had an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would only to a limited capability reinforce corner joints (and were loose additionally) are a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and may have a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs likely were reserved only for the senior members of the family, for they were held in great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decorative issues are combined in a style that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual items do not look to have been affixed with either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art project a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same time, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be found in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this type of chair may also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and delicate 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, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of rather thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been removed, and more expensive items may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used instead of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the preference 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 reknowned 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 versions 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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