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Out of all furniture items, the chair could be the most important. While many other objects (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair was viewed here in the common sense, from stool to throne to derivative types including a bench and sofa, which should be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously labeled.

The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic craft; it is also a signifier of social status. At the old royal courts there were significant connotations between being led to a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to squat on a stool. During the last century, the director’s or manager’s chair has been iconic of superior rank, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated level.

As its furniture form, the chair is employed for a wealth of various forms. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). From the olden days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Contemporary lifestyle has derived special chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair types have been changed to suit to different human uses. From its close importance with man, the chair exists to its full meaning only when in employ. Though it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen best and clearly evaluated with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the different areas of the chair have been labeled according to the areas of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the clear function of your chair is to support your body, its value is evaluated principally by how suitably it does measure up to this practical use. Within the structure of a chair, the designer is restricted by certain static regulation and principal measurements. In these limits, however, the chair builder has large freedom.

The history of the chair is an era of several thousand years. There are peoples that have created significant chair shapes, expressive of the topmost task in the spheres of handling and creativity. Among these such peoples, individual 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 careful design, are today found from tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs crafted like those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular form was obtained. There was to our understanding no marked differentiation between the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The simple change lies in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the selection of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was designed for an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this form persisted during much later periods. But the stool also then took on the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical role as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from evidence be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are made from wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then came up but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of those is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not with any ancient item still existing but as seen from a wealth of pictorial evidence. The archetype is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those were shown. These strange legs were considered to be created from bent wood and were therefore needed to bear great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super stable and were plainly signified.

The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; existing statues of seated Romans offer chairs of a more heavyset and apparently somewhat less intricately designed klismos. Both styles, the light or heavy, were seen again in the Classicist epoch. The klismos style is found in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some forms of profound iconicism of Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The ancestry of the chair in China isn’t able to be traced as long as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken folio of images and works of art was protected, detailing the inside and exterior of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are some chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an astonishing familiarity to images of older chairs.

Like in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair was designed both with and without arms although never missing its square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one form, however, the stiles were slightly curved over the arms in order to sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of its back). The three limbs are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the innovation of this back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would only to a limited extent embolden corner joints (as well as being loose additionally) indicate a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or have rounded edges—references as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; when too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to collapse. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs probably were only for senior persons 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 very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decoration aspects are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the fact that the individual items do not appear to have been put together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and held in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Paintings project a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, at the same era, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be found in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the innovation actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast amounts, as evidenced from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by 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 form—that was, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. 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 small upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are made from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all the members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more upmarket items can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles within 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 popularised and was widely distributed throughout the world.

Late 18th to 20th century
Within 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 products 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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