From all the furniture forms, the chair might be the most imperative. While many other items (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair is meant to be viewed here in the wider sense, from stool to throne to developed forms such as a bench and sofa, which may be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinuishable.

The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not only a physical support or an aesthetic creation; it historically was an indicator of social ranking. Within the past royal courts there were social distinctions between being seated on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. In the past century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been seen as a symbol of superior rank, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher platform.

In a furniture construction, the chair is utilised for a variety of different forms. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Contemporary lifestyle has developed particular chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair types has evolved to fit to changing human desires. From its significant association with man, the chair appears to its full advantage only when being utilised. Whereas it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is best seen and judged best with a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the individual limbs of the chair were labeled likened to the names of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the original role of a chair is to support the human body, its credit is judged basically from how completely it does measure up to this practical function. In the build of a chair, the builder is restricted within some static regulation and principal measurements. Under these boundaries, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.

The history of the chair lasted over an era of several thousand years. There were civilizations that had made distinctive chair types, as expressive of the foremost craft in the arenas of skill and design. In these civilisations, a note needs to 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 structures of skilled design, are seen from tombs. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have had four legs formed akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported over vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular design was created. There was to all appearances no notable differentiation in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The general variation exists in the decorative ornamentation, in the choice of more valuable inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was crafted as an easily stored seat for army officers. As a camp stool the chair persisted during much later times. But the stool also was designed as the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from evidence be noted, 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 were constructed in the form of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats were worked of wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, being of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric held between them, is seen again somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of these is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient object still existing but as seen from a trove of pictorial material. The archetype is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which were shown. These unusual legs were considered to be created out of bent wood and were probably bore a large amount of pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely strong and were particularly drawn.

The Romans embued the Greek style; evidence of statues of seated Romans display chairs of a heavier and in appearance slightly more crudely built klismos. Both designs, light and heavy, were popularised within the Classicist period. The klismos chair is found in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of marked originality in Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as far as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of images and paintings has been preserved, with images of the inside and outer parts of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that possess an interesting familiarity to styles of previous chairs.

Just the same as in Egypt, two chair forms persisted in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair was designed both with and without arms however never without the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, it has been seen, the stiles could be slightly curved by the arms so as to suit the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). Together, all three limbs are mortised on the yoke-like top rail. While the style of the Chinese back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only just to a limited ability support corner joints (as well as being loose in the bargain) signify an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or has rounded edges—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs probably were allowed only for elderly people in the family, for they were given great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have taken to China from the West. It is not dissimilar much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool by use of a curved member, which is often seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic issues are combined in a way that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the way that the individual members do not look to have been fixed with either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and fixed in position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its signature on the chair. Artworks display 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 out a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same period, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is displayed in engravings of the interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not decided that the style actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in vast amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself with its shapely 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 of styles—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The style owes its popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of relatively thick dimensions; but each member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive designs might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used rather than upholstery.

English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popular 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 reknowned and was widely distributed throughout the world.

Late 18th to 20th century
During 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 versions 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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