From each of the furniture objects, the chair might be of the most importance. While many other pieces (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is used here in the most open sense, from stool to throne to further items like the 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 distinguished.

The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support and/or aesthetic artwork; it historically was a symbol of social status. From the Medieval royal courts there were plain signifiers between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to cope with a stool. Since the recent century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as an indicator of superior standing, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher floor.

As its furniture form, the chair is employed for a range of various models. There are chairs manufactured to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). During the olden days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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 have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our contemporary lifestyle has derived particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair types has evolved to conform to growing human uses. From its close connection with man, the chair appears to its full meaning only when being utilised. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there is anything inside or not, a chair is best seen and clearly evaluated with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter need each other. Thus the various limbs of a chair were labeled according to the areas of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the principal work of a chair is to support a body, its value is tested firstly on how completely it does measure up to this practical use. Within the structure of a chair, the carpenter is limited by certain static law and principal measurements. Under these regulations, however, the chair maker has extensive freedom.

The history of the chair covered an era of several thousand years. There is evidence of peoples that had made distinctive chair types, as expressive of the foremost craft in the spheres of handling and creativity. Among such peoples, individual note must 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 result of careful design, were known from tomb discoveries. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair would have four legs designed akin to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular form was created. There appeared to be no significant differentiation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical peasantry. The general difference was in the type of ornamentation, in the evidence of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was crafted to be an easily stored seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this type continued for much later points in time. But the stool also took on the task of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can from evidence be observed, 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 were made in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats are made of wood. The plain make of the folding stool, made of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, reappeared somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this type is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient item still existing but as in a wealth of pictorial evidence. The better recognised is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which were shown. These odd legs were likely to be manufactured out of bent wood and were as such put under great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very stable and were visibly pointed out.

The Romans embued the Greek style; some statues of seated Romans show examples of a more heavyset and which appear to be a slightly crudely constructed klismos. Both designs, light and heavy, were popularised during the Classicist era. The klismos design can be evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special forms of notable individuality around Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as well as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of images and works of art was kept safe, with images of the inside and exterior of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an astonishing resemblance to designs of previous chairs.

Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair forms in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. That chair has been seen both with and without arms but never without the square seat and straight stiles (standing side supports) to give support to the back. In one design, however, the stiles could be marginally curved on top of the arms for the purpose of conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). The three limbs were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of the Chinese back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that merely to a limited limit stabilise corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the bargain) signify a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops around the rounded staves. All the members are round in section or has rounded edges—references perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs presumably were kept for older individuals in the family, for they were held in great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is believed to have been brought to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly fixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resultant effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic aspects are combined in a manner that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the way that the individual parts do not look to have been affixed by use of either glue or screws, but were mortised with one another and fixed in position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Artworks display a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to produce a pattern of little pads. The front board and a related board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same time, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be seen 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 might also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in impressive numbers, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and fine 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 was, as created in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat conforms 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 achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike practices in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of relatively thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more expensive designs might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood could 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 sometimes used rather than upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and was popular 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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