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From all the furniture objects, the chair might be of the most importance. While most other forms (save the bed) are devised 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 complex chairs 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 obviously definitive.

The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or aesthetic creation; it is historically a symbol of social status. At the historical royal courts there were plain connotations between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but without arms, and having to use a stool. During the past century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior rank, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated level.

In its furniture purpose, the chair is utilised for a range of various purposes. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). During past times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). We make 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.

Modern living has demanded particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms has been changed to conform to changing human requirements. Due to its particular association with man, the chair comes to its full purpose only when in use. Though it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is seen best and fairly regarded with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the several parts of a chair have been named like the areas of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the principal role of your chair is to support your body, its credit is evaluated generally by how completely it fulfills this practical job. Within the structure of a chair, the maker is restricted under the static rules and principal measurements. Under these restrictions, however, the chair maker has awesome freedom.

The history of the chair is dates of several thousand years. There were peoples that made significant chair shapes, expressive of the leading endeavour in the areas of skill and creativity. In these such civilisations, special 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 structures of masterful scheme, are a finding from tomb findings. First of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs designed like those of some animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this design a solid triangular construction was obtained. There was to our understanding no noteworthy differentiation from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The general change lied in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the particulars of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was crafted for an easily portable seat for army. As a camp stool the chair stayed until much later times. But the stool then was made for the role of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the structure of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are formed with wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, then appeared somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this form is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is recognised not in any ancient specimen still around but as seen in a variety of pictorial evidence. The significant kind is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs were displayed. These unique legs were thought to have been manufactured of bent wood and were thus subjected to great pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat had to be therefore extremely durable and were clearly denoted.

The Romans borrowed from the Greek chair; some models of seated Romans show chairs of a heavier and are a rather less intricately constructed klismos. Both features, light or heavy, were revived within the Classicist period. The klismos chair is used in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in particular types of notable uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.

China
The ancestry of the chair in China is not able to be traced as far as the progression of the chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of drawings and works of art had been preserved, displaying the inside and outside of Chinese households and the designs of furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are some chairs constructed of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing familiarity to styles of ancient chairs.

As in Egypt, two iconic chair forms existed in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair has been designed both with or without arms but always having the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, it has been found, the stiles could be delicately curved on top of the arms so as to conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of its back). All three parts are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Though the innovation of a back splat later had a foundation for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden members that would merely to a restricted extent stabilise corner joints (and are loose into the bargain) indicate an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which ends around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—an acknowledgement perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and might have had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; when too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were reserved only for older members of the family, for they were greatly esteemed.

The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is prettily held to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the resulting effect of these two furniture items is stylized. The structure and aesthetic elements are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is a result of the manner that the individual items do not look to have been adjoined by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised into one another and locked into its place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Works of art show a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture for traveling which, during the same era, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is seen in engravings of interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type of chair may also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not believed that the design actually was instigated in The Netherlands. Usually, the legs of the chair were 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 crafted in vast amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself with its elegant 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 form—that was, to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes such popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and grants a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Typically the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are made 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 of those are made from wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been taken away, and more upmarket chairs might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carving. The wood could 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 instead of upholstery.

English chairs in the 18th century were more open in design than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles throughout most of France and was popularised 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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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