Of all furniture objects, the chair could be of most importance. While many other forms (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is looked upon here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to derivative items including the bench and sofa, which might be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly defined.

The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece; it is historically semiotic of social hierarchy. Within the historical royal courts there were plain signifiers between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to use a stool. From the past century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed iconic of superior rank, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher floor.

In a furniture creation, the chair can be used for a range of different models. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We design 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, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Modern day living has demanded new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms has been changed to fit to differing human needs. From its close link with man, the chair lives to its full advantage only when in use. Whereas it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly evaluated with a person using it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the various elements of the chair are given labels corresponding to the elements of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the first job of the chair is to support the human body, its value is evaluated basically for how well it measures up to this practical role. In the design of a chair, the builder is bound in particular static law and principal measurements. Within these restrictions, however, the chair maker has large freedom.

The history of the chair was dates of several thousand years. There were peoples that had made individual chair forms, expressive of the topmost craft in the spheres of handling and art. Among those societies, 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 skilled scheme, are known from tomb discoveries. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs crafted not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular form was crafted. There was from our knowledge no marked variation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical citizens. The general variation lies in the type of ornamentation, in the evidence of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted for an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that kind stayed for much later periods. But the stool then also took on the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its technical history as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can already be observed, 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 are made in the shape of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats are formed out of wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric held between them, can be seen but some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this type is the folding stool, of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient item still around but seen in a trove of pictorial evidence. The significant kind is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground outside Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which can be seen. These unique legs were possibly manufactured from bent wood and were probably had extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super strong and were overtly signified.

The Romans emulated the Greek chair; a number of casts of seated Romans show designs of a denser and which appear to be a somewhat less delicately built klismos. Both types, the light and heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist period. The klismos influence is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special brands of notable individuality within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as far as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of sketches and works of art was kept safe, with images of the interior and exterior of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing resemblance to pictures of older chairs.

As in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been seen both with and without arms but always having a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one style, it has been found, the stiles are marginally curved above the arms so as to sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a back). Together, the three limbs were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the design of this back splat had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden members that only to a limited capability support corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the bargain) are a feature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which ends over the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or have rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and might have had a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to fall. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs most likely were allowed only for elderly persons, for they were greatly esteemed.

The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately joined to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of both of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decoration elements are combined in a way that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been put together with either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and held in 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. Paintings show a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same period, granted the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is displayed in engravings of the interior of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair is also made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not determined that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in vast numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its shapely 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 form—that is to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are made from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and finer chairs can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used in place of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and found favour in large 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
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 brands 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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