From all the furniture pieces, the chair may be the most important. While many other objects (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair must be used here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to developed makes including the 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 evidently definitive.

The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece; it was historically a signifier of social placement. In the past royal courts there were significant distinctions between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to cope with a stool. In the recent century, the director’s and manager’s chair has risen iconic of superior status, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated level.

In a furniture creation, the chair can be used for a number of various makes. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Contemporary lifestyle has developed special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds have been perfected to conform to growing human desires. Due to its unique importance with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when in use. Though it is not relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and clearly evaluated by a person using it, because chair and sitter suit each other. Thus the several areas of the chair were given names as the elements of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the primary work of your chair is to support the body, its worth is judged generally from how completely it does fulfill this practical purpose. In the design of the chair, the carpenter is restricted with certain static laws and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair creator has great freedom.

The history of the chair lasted an epoch of several thousand years. There were cultures that had individual chair shapes, expressions of the topmost task in the industries of skill and creativity. From these such cultures, particular mention can 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 construct of skilled scheme, are found from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs designed as akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular structure was obtained. There was from our knowledge no particular variation from the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary populace. The main change lies in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the selection of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was developed to be an easily carried seat for officers. As a camp stool this type continued for much later periods of time. But the stool then took on the character of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from today 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 are in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were created from wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then appeared some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of these is the folding stool, of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not with any ancient specimen still existing but as in a trove of pictorial objects. The archetype is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which were shown. These odd legs were considered to be executed from bent wood and were probably subjected to great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very solid and were visibly drawn.

The Romans embued the Greek designs; designs of statues of seated Romans are designs of a heavier and in appearance somewhat less delicately constructed klismos. Both types, the light or heavy, were popularised in the Classicist period. The klismos influence can be found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular types of marked originality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as far back as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of images and paintings had been kept safe, displaying the inside and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are some chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting similarity to pictures of previous chairs.

As were the designs in Egypt, two chair designs dominated in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair was found both with or without arms but never missing the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one image, it must be said, the stiles are delicately curved on top of the arms for the purpose of conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). Together, the three limbs were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of the back splat later had a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could only to a limited capability embolden corner joints (as well as being loose additionally) are an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—a left over maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs likely were reserved for elderly members of the family, for they were given great respect.

The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is intricately fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is generally provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic issues are combined in a style that is all at once both naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual parts do not appear to have been held together with either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Paintings project a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same period, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is found 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. While this design of chair is also seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not certain that the form actually began in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in large quantities, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that was, to say, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are made from wood of relatively thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive items may be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for all 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 form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and became the preference 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 commonly known 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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