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From each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be of most importance. While most of the other items (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is intended to be said here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to further makes such as the bench or sofa, which should be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinguished.

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 an aesthetic artwork; it historically was a signifier of social status. In the past royal courts there were important differences between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, or having to sit on a stool. In the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as a symbol of superior standing, and in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher floor.

As a furniture creation, the chair can be used for a wealth of various forms. There are chairs structured to fit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs 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 make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our contemporary lifestyle has designated new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair types have been changed to suit to changing human requirements. For its close link with man, the chair appears to its full advantage only when in employ. Though it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there is anything inside or not, a chair is best seen and fairly judged by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter suit the other. Thus the different elements of the chair are labeled according to the parts of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the simple job of a chair is to support the body, its worth is evaluated principally by how well it measures up to this practical use. Within the construction of a chair, the designer is restricted in the static regulations and principal measurements. Within these limits, however, the chair maker has great freedom.

The history of the chair covers a period of several thousand years. There are societies that had made distinctive chair shapes, as expressions of the premier endeavour in the industries of handling and aesthetics. Among these peoples, special 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of expert design, were found from tomb findings. First of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair had four legs crafted similar to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular structure was made. There was in our knowledge no significant differentiation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The real change was in the brand of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was created to be an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool that type persevered til much later days. But the stool then was made for the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can today be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the construction of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats are worked with wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, appeared again somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of those is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not in any ancient object still existing but from a trove of pictorial items. The most recognisable is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs can be seen. These odd legs were presumed to have been crafted from bent wood and were probably bore great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore very durable and were overtly denoted.

The Romans embued the Greek designs; existing statues of seated Romans are evidence of a heavier and are a somewhat less intricately crafted klismos. Both types, light or heavy, were seen again during the Classicist era. The klismos style is evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some brands of notable individuality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The past of the chair in China cannot be tracked as well as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed folio of drawings and artworks has been protected, displaying the interiors and outside of Chinese homes and the furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a number of chairs made from wood or lacquered wood, that display an amazing similarity to images of older chairs.

Just as in Egypt, there existed two major chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair was designed both with or without arms though never without the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to support the back. In one image, however, the stiles could be marginally curved by the arms to conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Each of the three sections are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of the back splat had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would only to a restricted capability support corner joints (and furthermore are loose additionally) are an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs needed the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this era armchairs presumably were only for older persons, for they were given great respect.

The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is generally possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decorative issues are combined in a style that is all at once naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the way that the individual members do not look to have been fixed together with either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and held in 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. Paintings display a kind of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be seen in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this style of chair can also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the design actually was born in The Netherlands. Normally, 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 obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in large numbers, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious 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 of forms—that is, as brought out in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes its 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. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are made from wood of quite thick measurements; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and finer examples would be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and won 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 well-known 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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