Out of all furniture forms, the chair might be the primary one. While most of the other items (save for the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is meant to be said here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms like a bench and sofa, which might be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinuishable.

The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic craft; it can also be a signifier of social status. Within the past royal courts there were plain differences between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to utilise a stool. Since the past century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as a signifier of superior standing, as well as in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher floor.

In its furniture purpose, the chair ranges from a wealth of different makes. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (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. There are chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our lifestyle has developed special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has adapted to suit to growing human requirements. Because of its unique relationship with man, the chair appears to its full significance only when being used. Though it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is understood and regarded best by a person using it, because chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the different elements of a chair are labeled as the names of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the elementary purpose of a chair is to support your body, its worth is valued principally by how completely it measures up to this practical role. Within the manufacture of a chair, the builder is bound within particular static regulations and principal measurements. Through these regulations, however, the chair designer has great freedom.

The history of the chair extended over a period of several thousand years. There are peoples that created unique chair shapes, expressions of the highest endeavour in the spheres of handling and aesthetics. Within these cultures, a 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 structures of skilled craft, are now known from discoveries made in tombs. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs crafted as akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular form was obtained. There was from our knowledge no significant change between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The only change lied in the complex ornamentation, in the evidence of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was designed as an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool this chair stayed around for much later days. But the stool also then played the use of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be observed, 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 are constructed in the shape of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are created from wood. The simplistic construction of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, is seen but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of these is the folding stool, from ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient object still in form but as seen from a large amount of pictorial evidence. The better known is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place in outer 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 can be displayed. These creative legs were probably executed in bent wood and were thus bore extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely durable and were visibly signified.

The Romans embued the Greek designs; quite a few models of seated Romans display designs of a denser and in appearance rather less intricately built klismos. Both types, light or heavy, were popularised as part of the Classicist period. The klismos chair is used in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of considerable individuality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be tracked as far as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of sketches and artworks had been kept safe, detailing the interior and outside of Chinese houses and their furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are some chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing similarity to images of older chairs.

Like in Egypt, two chair forms persisted in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That chair has been seen both with or without arms but always having the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to firm the back. In one style, however, the stiles could be delicately curved over the arms for the purpose of conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its chairback). All three limbs are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the idea of the Chinese back splat exercised an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that just to a restricted extent stabilise corner joints (and furthermore were loose as a result) represent a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs presumably were kept only for older people, for they were greatly respected.

The Chinese folding stool is believed to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resultant effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decoration issues are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been put together by either glue or screws, but had been mortised with one another and fixed in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Works of art display a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same era, possessed the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be found in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair might also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, 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 slim shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable quantities, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat suits 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 tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are made from wood of fairly thick density; but each member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and finer designs can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engraving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is in some cases used rather than upholstery.

English chairs in the 18th century were more open in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and found favour in several 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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