From all the furniture needs, the chair could be the most imperative. While most other objects (save the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is intended to be said here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to complex kinds like a bench or sofa, which can be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously labeled.

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 and an aesthetic piece; it historically is semiotic of social status. In the Medieval royal courts there were important connotations between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to sit on a stool. In the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior rank, like in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a high-set floor.

As a furniture construction, the chair can be utilised for a wealth of various models. There are chairs created to suit man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to denote his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). During historical days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (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 make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Contemporary lifestyle has demanded unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All these chair kinds has evolved to fit to differing human uses. From its particular relationship with man, the chair exists to its full meaning only when in employ. Though it makes no difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and fairly judged with a person using it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the various limbs of the chair have been named corresponding to the areas of the human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the elementary role of your chair is to support our human body, its value is judged generally on how suitably it does measure up to this practical use. In the design of a chair, the carpenter is restricted by some static regulation and principal measurements. Through these regulations, however, the chair designer has awesome freedom.

The history of the chair is a period of several thousand years. There is evidence of societies that had made individual chair types, as expressions of the premier task in the areas of handling and aesthetics. In such peoples, special note 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of careful design, are today found from tomb discoveries. The first one of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair would have had four legs shaped similar to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular design was obtained. There was to all appearances no notable variation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The simple difference lies in the kind of ornamentation, in the choice of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was made to be an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool this type continued for much later periods. But the stool also was designed for the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool being forgotten. This can from evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the shape of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were created from wood. The easy structure of the folding stool, made of two frames that spin on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, came up but some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of this kind is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not from any ancient specimen still in form but as in a variety of pictorial material. The iconic kind is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which can be shown. These creative legs were considered to have been created out of bent wood and were thus bore a large amount of pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore extremely durable and were visibly indicated.

The Romans embued the Greek style; evidence of models of seated Romans are evidence of a heavier and are a somewhat less intricately built klismos. Both types, light or heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist time. The klismos chair can be seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some special brands of marked originality within Denmark and Sweden during 1800.

China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be charted as long as that of Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full serial of drawings and paintings had been kept, with images of the interiors and outside of Chinese houses and the kinds of furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an intriguing familiarity to representations of past chairs.

Like in Egypt, there existed two standard chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be seen both with or without arms although always with a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one kind, it has been found, the stiles could be marginally curved by the arms to conform to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the chairback). The three parts were mortised in the yoke-like top rail. While the style of a back splat then had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would only to a limited limit reinforce corner joints (and are loose to top it off) are a feature solely to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes over 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 pleasant and occasionally had a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were kept for the senior persons in the family, for they were greatly respected.

The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is intricately joined to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the ultimate effect of both of these furniture styles is stylized. The structure and decorative aspects are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual parts do not look to have been fixed together with either glue or screws, but had 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 left its signature on the chair. Works of art show a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same time, possessed 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 interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not held that the innovation actually originated in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of thin shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in considerable quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of such chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself by virtue of its shapely proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that is to say, as created in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat suits 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 covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of quite thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket items can be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used as an alternative to upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the most distinguished 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 popular 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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