Of all furniture pieces, the chair might be of most importance. While the majority of other forms (save the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is used here in the general sense, from stool to throne to derivative makes for example the bench and sofa, which should be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently definitive.

The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic object; it was historically semiotic of social ranking. From the Medieval royal courts there were social differences between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to utilise a stool. During the 20th century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed an indicator of superior dignity, like in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a high-set floor.

In a furniture purpose, the chair holds a number of different forms. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, or 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.

Our lifestyle has designated particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes has been evolved to suit to evolving human desires. From its close importance with man, the chair appears to its full significance only when used. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly evaluated with a person using it, because chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the several limbs of the chair have been given names corresponding to the names of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the simple job of a chair is to support the human body, its credit is evaluated basically from how completely it does fulfill this practical job. Within the design of the chair, the maker is restricted within particular static laws and principal measurements. In these restrictions, however, the chair builder has awesome freedom.

The history of the chair extended over an era of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that made distinctive chair types, as seen of the foremost task in the areas of skill and art. Out of such civilisations, a mention needs to 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 masterful design, are a finding from findings made in tombs. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have had four legs designed as akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a strong triangular design was made. There was apparently no marked difference from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The real difference existed in the type of ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed to be an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool this kind stayed around til much later points in time. But the stool also then was created as the task of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are made out of wood. The plain build of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric set between them, reappears but some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this form is the folding stool, from ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient specimen still existing but as in a wealth of pictorial objects. The best known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs are seen. These unique legs were understood to be created of bent wood and were in that case put under a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore super stable and were visibly indicated.

The Romans adopted the Greek design; evidence of casts of seated Romans display examples of a more heavyset and are a rather more crudely crafted klismos. Both kinds, light and heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist era. The klismos influence is known in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some special brands of notable uniqueness of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The past of the chair in China cannot be followed as long as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full serial of drawings and works of art had been kept, detailing the inside and outer parts of Chinese buildings and their furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing similarity to designs of previous chairs.

Just like in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair is found both with and without arms although always with the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one style, it has been found, the stiles had been lightly curved above the arms to suit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its chairback). Together, the three sections were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the design of the Chinese back splat then had a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could merely to a particular limit embolden corner joints (and were loose to top that off) signify a signature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and might have had a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs presumably were kept only for older people, for they were held in great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of both furniture designs is stylized. The structure and aesthetic parts are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not look to have been affixed by either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and held in its place 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. Paintings project a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same era, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is found in engravings of the interior 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 design of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not determined that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in considerable numbers, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of fairly thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and finer examples can be further embellished with very delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.

English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles throughout 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 popular 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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