Out of all furniture objects, the chair may be paramount. While many other forms (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is intended to be used here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to derivative items such as a bench and sofa, which can be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly definitive.

The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic item; it can also be a symbol of social ranking. In the Medieval royal courts there were plain differences between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to cope with a stool. In the past century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as a signifier of superior status, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised level.

As its furniture purpose, the chair holds a wealth of different makes. There are chairs designed to fit man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); since 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 and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Modern day living has derived new chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair shapes have evolved to match to differing human desires. Because of its particular link with man, the chair exists to its full significance only when being used. Whereas it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers if there might be things inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter require the other. Thus the several parts of the chair have been labeled according to the limbs of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the clear job of your chair is to support our body, its value is valued firstly on how well it does fulfill this practical job. Within the creation of a chair, the designer is limited by some static legislation and principal measurements. Inside these boundaries, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.

The history of the chair extends over an era of several thousand years. There are societies that had significant chair forms, as expressions of the premier task in the areas of craft and creativity. In such cultures, individual mention should 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 lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of careful scheme, are known from discoveries made in tombs. The first one of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair has four legs designed as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, leading to a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this design a stable triangular design was obtained. There was in our view no significant difference in the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular populace. The main variation existed in the level of ornamentation, in the choice of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was designed to be an easily packed seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool that kind stayed around til much later times. But the stool then was made for the character of a ceremonial seat, its original role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the structure of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats are made of wood. The simplistic build of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, can be seen somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this type is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient fossil still in form but as seen in a large amount of pictorial material. The better recognised is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs would be seen. These curving legs were understood to be manufactured in bent wood and were likely to have been had to bear extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore very strong and were overtly indicated.

The Romans emulated the Greek designs; some models of seated Romans offer chairs of a heavier and are a rather less intricately designed klismos. Both features, the light and the heavy, were revived during the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence is used in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in some particular forms of considerable iconicism around Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The past of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as well as the ancestry of chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full series of sketches and artworks has been preserved, displaying the inside and exterior of Chinese houses and the furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are some chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an intriguing resemblance to pictures of older chairs.

Just like in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair that had four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be found both with and without arms though never without the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one design, it must be said, the stiles are delicately curved by the arms so as to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of a chairback). All three sections were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the design of this back splat had an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would merely to a particular extent support corner joints (as well as being loose as a result) indicate a signature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which stops upon the rounded staves. All members are round in section or is given rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and occasionally had a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs likely were kept for the senior individuals in the family, for they were given great respect.

The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is elegantly fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is generally provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of these two furniture styles is stylized. The construction and decorative parts are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is a result of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been adjoined by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised into one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Works of art display 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 between the layers, stitched to bring up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same time, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is evidenced in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this style of chair can also be made in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced in impressive numbers, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself by its harmonious 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 styles—that is, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. 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 tiny upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been cut away, and more expensive items may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used in place of upholstery.

English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the favourite 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 styles 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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