From each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be the paramount one. While most of the other forms (save for the bed) are created to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair can be said here in the common sense, from stool to throne to derivative makes such as a bench and sofa, which might be considered 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 intriguing as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and an aesthetic creation; it was also an indicator of social rank. At the past royal courts there were social distinctions between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. From the recent century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as a symbol of superior rank, and even in democratic government meeting the speaker sits on a raised level.

In a furniture construction, the chair is employed for a variety of different makes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past days there were chairs for births (birth chairs); during the 20th century, there have been chairs used 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, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our contemporary lifestyle has derived new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair shapes has changed to match to growing human requirements. For its significant connection with man, the chair exists to its full meaning only when in use. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers whether there might be things inside or not, a chair is really understood and judged best by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter need one another. Thus the several parts of the chair have been named corresponding to the limbs of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the original job of the chair is to support a human body, its credit is judged principally from how well it does measure up to this practical job. In the manufacture of the chair, the builder is limited with the static rules and principal measurements. In these limits, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.

The history of the chair covered an era of several thousand years. There existed peoples that held unique chair types, seen of the premier object in the industries of skill and art. Out of these such cultures, individual note can 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 construct of skilled design, are now seen from tomb findings. First of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair has four legs designed like those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a durable triangular design was created. There seems to be no marked differentiation from the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The general difference was in the level of ornamentation, in the selection of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was developed to be an easily portable seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that stool stayed for much later periods of time. But the stool also then was made for the use of a ceremonial seat, its original function as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can now be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were worked from wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, reappears some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of these is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient specimen still existing but as seen from a wealth of pictorial items. The significant kind is the klismos displayed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area near Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them could be seen. These unusual legs were presumed to have been crafted with bent wood and were as such had great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints holding the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely stable and were plainly indicated.

The Romans adopted the Greek designs; designs of models of seated Romans offer designs of a heavier and apparently somewhat less intricately designed klismos. Both kinds, light and heavy, were revived during the Classicist era. The klismos style is known in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in particular brands of considerable iconicism in Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The history of the chair in China can not be charted as well as the history of chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken serial of drawings and artworks was kept, showing the inside and outside of Chinese houses and the furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a number of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that hold an interesting familiarity to designs of past chairs.

Like in Egypt, two chair designs persisted in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair has been constructed both with or without arms but never without a square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one form, however, the stiles could be delicately curved over the arms to conform correctly to the form of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of its back). The three limbs were mortised on the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of the Chinese back splat exercised a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that would merely to a limited limit support corner joints (and then are loose in the bargain) represent a signature signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes upon the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or have rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and might have had a plaited seat. These chairs required of the sitter to be stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of collapsing. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this era armchairs most likely were kept only for the senior individuals, for they were given great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It is akin much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is often possessing metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The construction and decoration elements are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been put together by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and locked into position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Works of art project a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to bring up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same time, held the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the interior of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair may also be found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in vast amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that is, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes its popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat adheres to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them use wood of fairly thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more upmarket chairs would be further embellished with very delicate and decorative engravings. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.

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

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