Out of all furniture items, the chair might be paramount. While many other pieces (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be looked upon here in the general sense, from stool to throne to further pieces including a bench or sofa, which can be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinguished.

The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support and aesthetic craft; it was also semiotic of social place. In the old royal courts there were significant distinctions between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. During the past century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been a signifier of superior rank, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised level.

As its furniture creation, the chair is used for a wealth of variations. There are chairs structured to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (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, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our contemporary lifestyle has designated particular chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair forms have evolved to fit to evolving human desires. For its significant link with man, the chair comes to its full significance only when being utilised. Although it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there are items inside or not, a chair is really seen and clearly evaluated by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the several areas of a chair were named likened to the elements of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the elemental role of your chair is to support the human body, its worth is evaluated generally by how completely it does measure up to this practical job. In the construction of a chair, the builder is limited for some static regulation and principal measurements. Within these rules, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.

The history of the chair covers dates of several thousand years. There were peoples that had significant chair forms, expressive of the leading work in the industries of craft and creativity. Out of these such societies, individual note 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful craft, are today seen from tomb findings. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs designed similar to those of an animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular construction was crafted. There was in our understanding no particular differentiation from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common people. The only change was in the complexity of ornamentation, in the selection of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was developed for an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool this chair persevered for much later days. But the stool then also was designed as the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical job as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the structure of folding stools but are not able to be folded as the seats were formed out of wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this kind is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient specimen still extant but as seen in a large amount of pictorial items. The best recognised is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place by Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of them are seen. These curved legs were presumably manufactured from bent wood and were in that case put under great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely stable and were particularly indicated.

The Romans embued the Greek designs; some statues of seated Romans display designs of a more heavyset and in appearance somewhat crudely designed klismos. Both types, the light or heavy, were seen again within the Classicist era. The klismos design is used in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular types of profound iconicism within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be charted as well as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of drawings and works of art has been preserved, detailing the interiors and exterior of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are some chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that show an astonishing resemblance to pictures of past chairs.

As was the case in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair can be constructed both with and without arms though never missing a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one form, it has been seen, the stiles were slightly curved on top of the arms in order to sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). The three limbs had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of this back splat had an introduction for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden members that could only to a limited capability reinforce corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the result) represent a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and might have had a plaited bottom. These chairs required of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs presumably were reserved for older individuals in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the ultimate effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The structure and decoration parts are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been adjoined by either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and held in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Artworks project a type of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same period, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair is evidenced in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair is also seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain that the innovation actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in vast quantities, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with its elegant proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of quite thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been taken away, and more expensive items would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used rather than upholstery.

English chairs in the 18th century were more open in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popular 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
In 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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