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Out of all furniture pieces, the chair might be paramount. While many other forms (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is used here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds such as a bench or sofa, which can be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinuishable.

The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece; it was also a signifier of social rank. From the Medieval royal courts there were plain differences between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to make do with a stool. In the last century, the director’s and manager’s chair has been seen as an indicator of superior position, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.

In its furniture creation, the chair ranges from a number of variations. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status 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 to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our lifestyle has derived new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has been perfected to conform to differing human uses. Due to its unique importance with man, the chair comes to its full importance only when used. Whereas it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and regarded best by a person using it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the different elements of a chair have been labeled likened to the names of our human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the basic job of a chair is to support your body, its credit is tested generally on how fully it does fulfill this practical job. In the manufacture of a chair, the designer is restricted for some static regulations and principal measurements. Through these limits, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.

The history of the chair lasted over dates of several thousand years. There existed cultures that created unique chair types, expressive of the topmost craft in the arenas of handling and aesthetics. In these such cultures, 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of skilled scheme, are today a finding from tomb discoveries. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs designed as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular form was made. There was from our understanding no marked variation from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The main difference lies in the brand of ornamentation, in the choice of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was made as an easily packed seat for army. As a camp stool that type continued til much later times. But the stool then was created as the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from evidence be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were created with wood. The plain build of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, came up somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient item still around but found in a variety of pictorial items. The most well known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs were shown. These strange legs were understood to be manufactured with bent wood and were therefore had to bear huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very solid and were clearly indicated.

The Romans emulated the Greek style; some casts of seated Romans display chairs of a heavier and which appear to be a slightly crudely designed klismos. Both designs, the light and the heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist time. The klismos influence is known in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of profound originality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China can not be tracked as far back as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of sketches and paintings had been protected, with images of the inside and exteriors of Chinese houses and their furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are some chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing likeness to styles of previous chairs.

Like in Egypt, there existed two major chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That chair has been seen both with or without arms but always having a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one image, it has been seen, the stiles are slightly curved over the arms for the purpose of conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). All three sections were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the design of a back splat had a foundation for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could merely to a limited ability reinforce corner joints (and furthermore were loose into the bargain) are a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and had on occasion a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs likely were kept only for elderly people in the family, for they were given great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is understood to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both furniture designs is stylized. The construction and decoration elements are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been fixed with either glue or screws, but have been mortised onto one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its name on the chair. Works of art show a design of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same time, granted 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 inside 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 style of chair is also made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not determined that the style actually originated in The Netherlands. Typically, 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 unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in large amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of 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 form—that is, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. 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 little upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of relatively thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and finer items may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used in place of upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more varied in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the favourite 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 popular and was widely distributed throughout the world.

Late 18th to 20th century
During 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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