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Out of each of the furniture pieces, the chair could be of most importance. While most other forms (apart from the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair was viewed here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to derivative kinds including a bench or sofa, which might be considered as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinguished.

The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic item; it is historically semiotic of social placement. At the historical royal courts there were plain connotations between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. During the 20th century, a director’s and manager’s chair has become a symbol of superior rank, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised level.

In a furniture purpose, the chair is employed for a number of various models. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design 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.

Modern day living has derived new chairs in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes have been perfected to fit to different human uses. From its close connection with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when used. Whereas 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 seen best and regarded best with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the several elements of the chair have been given labels like the elements of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the clear work of the chair is to support our human body, its value is valued generally for how well it fulfills this practical job. Within the manufacture of a chair, the builder is bound in certain static rules and principal measurements. Inside these limitations, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.

The history of the chair is dates of several thousand years. There are cultures that held individual chair forms, as expressive of the leading object in the industries of craft and aesthetics. In these cultures, individual note 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of masterful make, are today a finding from findings made in tombs. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have four legs formed like those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a durable triangular design was made. There was from our view no notable change between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The simple change lies in the type of ornamentation, in the selection of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was manufactured for an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool that form persisted during much later days. But the stool then also was created as the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can already be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the shape of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were formed out of wood. The simple make of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, reappeared somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient fossil still extant but as seen from a large amount of pictorial objects. The iconic kind is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs would be seen. These unusual legs were considered to have been manufactured out of bent wood and were in that case put under a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super solid and were particularly indicated.

The Romans adopted the Greek chair; quite a few models of seated Romans show examples of a denser and are a slightly less delicately constructed klismos. Both designs, the light and heavy, were revived during the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence is evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular forms of profound individuality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The history of the chair in China can not be traced as well as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken serial of sketches and artworks was kept, with images of the interior and exteriors of Chinese houses and the designs of furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting likeness to designs of previous chairs.

Just the same as in Egypt, there were two iconic chair designs in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair was designed both with and without arms although never without its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one form, it must be said, the stiles are slightly curved by the arms for the purpose of suit the form of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the chairback). The three limbs had been mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of the Chinese back splat then had an influence on English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only to a particular extent support corner joints (and furthermore were loose to top it off) are an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and occasionally had a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs presumably were allowed only for senior individuals in the family, for they were held in great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have come to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resultant effect of these furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decoration elements are combined in a style that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual members do not appear to have been fixed by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and locked into place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its signature on the chair. Works of art display a kind of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after loosening some small 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 kind of chair is evidenced in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair can also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the form actually started in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes the 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. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of quite thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more upmarket designs may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and became the preference 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
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 brands 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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