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From each of the furniture needs, the chair might be the most imperative. While many other pieces (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be used here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed items 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 definitive.

The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support and aesthetic craft; it was also symbolic of social hierarchy. From the historical royal courts there were clear signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to squat on a stool. In the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as iconic of superior standing, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on an elevated floor.

In its furniture form, the chair is employed for a range of various purposes. There are chairs manufactured to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank 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 to die in (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Modern day living has derived particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds have been evolved to match to growing human desires. Because of its unique importance with man, the chair exists to its full purpose only when in employ. Though it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly tested by a person utilising it, for chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the individual limbs of the chair are labeled according to the parts of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the fundamental job of a chair is to support our human body, its worth is valued firstly by how well it does measure up to this practical role. In the design of a chair, the builder is bound for some static law and principal measurements. Through these regulations, however, the chair designer has large freedom.

The history of the chair is an epoch of several thousand years. There are civilizations that created unique chair forms, as seen of the foremost work in the arenas of handling and creativity. In these such civilisations, individual 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 upshot of masterful design, were a finding from tomb discoveries. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a stable triangular design was crafted. There was in our knowledge no noteworthy variation between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The main change exists in the type of ornamentation, in the selection of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was made to be an easily carried seat for army. As a camp stool this stool continued until much later days. But the stool also existed in the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can today be observed, 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 in the form of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were worked from wood. The simple build of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, also appeared at some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this type is the folding stool, made of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient specimen still existing but in a trove of pictorial evidence. The most well known is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of those legs could be displayed. These odd legs were probably crafted of 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 were therefore super stable and were overtly pointed out.

The Romans embued the Greek chair; some casts of seated Romans offer designs of a more heavyset and are a slightly less intricately crafted klismos. Both features, light or heavy, were brought back during the Classicist epoch. The klismos style can be seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special types of profound individuality in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be tracked as long as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of images and paintings had been preserved, displaying the insides and outside of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing similarity to styles of ancient chairs.

Just like in Egypt, there were two standard chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair was constructed both with and without arms although never missing the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one design, it has been seen, the stiles were lightly curved over the arms so as to conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a back). Together, the three sections had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the style of a back splat later had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that merely to a limited extent embolden corner joints (and then are loose as well) indicate a design signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and might have had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs most likely were reserved only for older individuals in the family, for they were held in great respect.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is elegantly affixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these furniture items is stylized. The construction and aesthetic elements are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual items do not appear to have been held together by either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Works of art show a style 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 produce a pattern of small 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 an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same time, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of the 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 type of chair may also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the design actually was born in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The style asserts itself by its elegant proportions and fine 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, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

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

English chairs in the 18th century were more differentiated in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 popular 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 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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