Out of all furniture pieces, the chair may be the paramount one. While most other forms (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is viewed here in the general sense, from stool to throne to developed kinds such as the bench or sofa, which can 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 exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not only a physical support and/or aesthetic artwork; it was also a signifier of social hierarchy. Within the Medieval royal courts there were social distinctions between sitting on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. During the last century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has risen a signifier of superior rank, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on an elevated floor.

In its furniture construction, the chair is utilised for a variety of variations. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our modern lifestyle has developed special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types has been adapted to suit to changing human desires. From its particular connection with man, the chair comes to its full significance only when in use. Though it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is really understood and clearly evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the individual limbs of the chair are named likened to the names of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the elemental work of the chair is to support your body, its value is evaluated generally on how well it fulfills this practical role. In the creation of a chair, the builder is restricted for some static regulation and principal measurements. Inside these limits, however, the chair maker has great freedom.

The history of the chair was an era of several thousand years. There existed civilizations that have created significant chair types, as expressions of the principal craft in the spheres of craft and design. Within these such peoples, 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of expert craft, were 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 formed akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular form was made. There was to all appearances no noteworthy differentiation in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical populace. The simple variation was in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the choice of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was created as an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool that form stayed around for much later points. But the stool then was designed as the use of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the form of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are created of wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, reappears somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of this type is the folding stool, from ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not from any ancient object still existing but in a wealth of pictorial evidence. The most well known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground near 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 were displayed. These odd legs were likely to be manufactured of bent wood and were in that case had huge pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very stable and were plainly denoted.

The Romans emulated the Greek designs; quite a few statues of seated Romans show evidence of a more heavyset and in appearance somewhat less delicately designed klismos. Both types, light or heavy, were seen again as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of considerable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as well as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of drawings and artworks had been kept, displaying the interior and outer parts of Chinese households and the kinds of furniture. Also kept of the 16th century are a collection of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing familiarity to images of previous chairs.

Just like in Egypt, two chair forms persisted in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair is found both with or without arms however always having its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one design, it has been found, the stiles could be delicately curved above the arms to suit the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). The three limbs had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the design of the back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only to a restricted extent stabilise corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the result) represent a design solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs demanded of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs probably were reserved for elderly persons, for they were held in great respect.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It does not vary very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the resultant effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decoration issues are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual items do not look to have been held together by either glue or screws, but had 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 put its mark on the chair. Paintings display a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same period, held 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 affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair might also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not held that the form actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender shape; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and delicate 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 brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and allows 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 on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those are constructed from wood of quite thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been sanded away, and more expensive designs can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and became the favourite 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 commonly known 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 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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