From each of the furniture items, the chair might be the primary one. While most of the other forms (except the bed) are intended 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 complex kinds like the bench or sofa, which might be regarded 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 interesting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and an aesthetic creation; it was historically a symbol of social place. In the old royal courts there were social signifiers between possessing a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. From the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as an identifier of superior dignity, and even in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.

In its furniture creation, the chair can be utilised for a number of various purposes. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (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 have chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our modern lifestyle has designated special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes have been changed to suit to growing human requirements. Due to its significant association with man, the chair comes to its full advantage only when in employ. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is understood best and regarded best with a person using it, because chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the individual parts of the chair are given labels corresponding to the names of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the basic job of your chair is to support a human body, its value is valued principally for how well it measures up to this practical purpose. Within the design of the chair, the maker is bound within some static rules and principal measurements. Under these regulations, however, the chair builder has great freedom.

The history of the chair extended over an era of several thousand years. There are cultures that made distinctive chair shapes, as expressive of the foremost task in the spheres of skill and creativity. Out of those cultures, particular mention must 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 items of expert craft, are today a finding from tomb discoveries. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs crafted like those of some animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a solid triangular structure was created. There appears to be no marked variation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The general difference was in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was designed as an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the stool stayed for much later periods of time. But the stool also was created for the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence 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 were in the shape of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats are worked out of wood. The simple make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, appeared again but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of these is the folding stool, from ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient item still existing but seen in a variety of pictorial evidence. The best known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which are displayed. These strange legs were possibly created from bent wood and were therefore had to bear extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super strong and were overtly denoted.

The Romans emulated the Greek design; designs of models of seated Romans are evidence of a more heavyset and are a rather less delicately constructed klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were seen again in the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is used in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special types of marked uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as far as that of Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of images and artworks was kept safe, displaying the interiors and outside of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a trove of chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an amazing likeness to styles of older chairs.

Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two major chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair is constructed both with and without arms though never without a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, however, the stiles are delicately curved by the arms to conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a back). The three areas had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of this back splat later had an introduction for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that just to a particular capability stabilise corner joints (and furthermore were loose into the bargain) signify an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—referable as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and may have a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs likely were only for older individuals in the family, for they were respected greatly.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the ultimate effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic parts are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not seem to have been adjoined by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Artworks display a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same time, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not decided that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in large quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The form 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 styles—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat suits 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 tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of quite thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket examples may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used rather than upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popular 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
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 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, hint that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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