From each of the furniture pieces, the chair may be primary. While many other objects (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair was used here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to complex makes for example the bench and sofa, which may be viewed as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not obviously distinguished.

The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as a creative art. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or an aesthetic artwork; it was historically symbolic of social standing. From the old royal courts there were significant signifiers between having a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to squat on a stool. In the last century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as a symbol of superior position, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.

As its furniture purpose, the chair is used for a wealth of various forms. There are chairs manufactured to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). From past times there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used 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. We make chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our contemporary lifestyle has developed special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair types have adapted to fit to evolving human desires. For its close relationship with man, the chair appears to its full purpose only when being used. While it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really seen and regarded best with a person sitting in it, for chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the individual areas of a chair were labeled corresponding to the names of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the original work of your chair is to support the human body, its worth is evaluated firstly from how suitably it measures up to this practical use. Within the creation of the chair, the carpenter is restricted with some static laws and principal measurements. Inside these rules, however, the chair creator has large freedom.

The history of the chair is an era of several thousand years. There are peoples that had individual chair shapes, expressions of the principal task in the industries of handling and creativity. From such cultures, particular note 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the objects of skilled design, are now found from discoveries made in tombs. One of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair has four legs shaped not unlike those of a designated animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular form was crafted. There was from our knowledge no particular variation from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary peasantry. The real variation lies in the kind of ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was manufactured for an easily stored seat for soldiers. As a camp stool that kind persisted during much later points. But the stool then also was made as the task of a ceremonial seat, its technical function as a folding stool fast forgotten. This can now be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are constructed in the form of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are created with wood. The plain manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, came up some time later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of those is the folding stool, made of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not as any ancient object still in form but found in a trove of pictorial material. The better recognised is the klismos seen on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of which were visible. These unusual legs were considered to be executed of bent wood and were probably had extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super durable and were visibly pointed out.

The Romans emulated the Greek chair; a number of casts of seated Romans offer designs of a thicker and are a slightly crudely crafted klismos. Both types, light and heavy, were revived within the Classicist epoch. The klismos influence can be evidenced in French Empire furniture, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of profound individuality in Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The past of the chair in China is not able to be charted as far back as chairs in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) a full folio of images and artworks had been protected, displaying the interiors and exteriors of Chinese homes and the furniture. Preserved also since the 16th century are some chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting resemblance to pictures of previous chairs.

Same as in Egypt, there were two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair can be constructed both with and without arms although always having a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one image, though, the stiles could be delicately curved by the arms to conform to the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of its back). Each of the three parts were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Although the design of a back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that only just to a particular capability embolden corner joints (and furthermore were loose additionally) are a feature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or has rounded edges—acknowledging maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have had a plaited texture. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a way of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs most likely were kept only for elderly persons in the family, for they were given great respect.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is akin very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a variation in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the ultimate effect of both of these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decorative elements are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the way that the individual members do not appear to have been fixed by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised onto one another and fixed in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Artworks project a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of little pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture while traveling which, at the same time, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair is seen in engravings of the inside of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this kind of chair is also found in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the form actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in considerable amounts, as can be surmised from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is an entire row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The style asserts itself with its elegant proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature style—that was, as progressed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally 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 conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike methods in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of fairly thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more upmarket examples would be further embellished with special delicate and decorative woodwork. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry may be used for all the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used rather than upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won favour 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 well-known 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 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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