Out of each of the furniture objects, the chair might be the primary one. While many other items (save the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair was used here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to developed makes for example a bench and 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 obviously definitive.

The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as a creative art. The chair is not just a physical support and aesthetic craft; it historically was a symbol of social rank. In the old royal courts there were clear signifiers between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to sit on a stool. In the last century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as iconic of superior rank, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a higher floor.

In a furniture purpose, the chair encompasses a number of different models. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair types has been changed to conform to different human requirements. Due to its unique relationship with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when in employ. Although it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is understood and regarded best with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter require one another. Thus the different elements of a chair have been given labels likened to the limbs of our human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the simple role of the chair is to support our body, its credit is valued firstly by how well it does fulfill this practical function. Within the creation of a chair, the builder is limited within some static regulations and principal measurements. Inside these limitations, however, the chair builder has marvellous freedom.

The history of the chair extended over dates of several thousand years. There were civilizations that created iconic chair shapes, seen of the foremost endeavour in the spheres of handling and art. Out of these peoples, special mention 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of skilled scheme, are seen from tombs. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have had four legs shaped like those of some animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular structure was obtained. There seems to be no significant difference between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common populace. The general change existed in the complex ornamentation, in the selection of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most likely was made for an easily carried seat for army officers. As a camp stool that kind persevered til much later points. But the stool also then was made for the character of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool being forgotten. This can now 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 can not be folded as the seats were made from wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then came again but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of those is the folding stool, made of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient object still extant but in a large amount of pictorial objects. The better known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of these legs would be shown. These curved legs were possibly manufactured in bent wood and were in that case needed to bear extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore extremely solid and were clearly signified.

The Romans adopted the Greek chair; some casts of seated Romans offer examples of a more heavyset and in appearance kind of less delicately built klismos. Both features, the light or heavy, were popularised in the Classicist time. The klismos design is evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in special kinds of profound iconicism in Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The past of the chair in China cannot be followed as far as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken serial of sketches and artworks had been preserved, with images of the inside and outside of Chinese buildings and the furniture. Another preservation of the 16th century are some chairs of wood or lacquered wood, that possess an amazing similarity to representations of ancient chairs.

As in Egypt, there were two particular chair designs in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This chair has been constructed both with and without arms although always with the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one kind, it must be said, the stiles had been delicately curved over the arms to sit correctly with the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). The three parts had been mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of the back splat then had an influence on English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden members that merely to a restricted extent support corner joints (and furthermore are loose as well) are a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs required of the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for when too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs likely were allowed only for the senior family members, for they were held in great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resultant effect of these two furniture designs is stylized. The construction and decoration parts are combined in a style that is at the same time naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the fact that the individual parts do not appear to have been fixed by means of either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and fixed in its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Artworks show a design of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same era, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be seen in engravings of the inside of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair is also seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not held that the style actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of relatively thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket examples might be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is often used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and found favour 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 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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