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Out of all furniture pieces, the chair might be of most importance. While many other items (apart from the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair can be regarded here in the most common sense, from stool to throne to further items including a bench or sofa, which might be seen as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly distinuishable.

The social history of the chair is as stimulating as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or aesthetic object; it was historically a signifier of social rank. Within the historical royal courts there were significant connotations between being led to a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to use a stool. From the recent century, a director’s and manager’s chair has been regarded as iconic of superior status, and in democratic governments the speaker sits on a higher level.

In its furniture form, the chair holds a number of different makes. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). In historical days there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs used to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our lifestyle has designated unique chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms have perfected to conform to different human needs. For its close connection with man, the chair appears to its full importance only when in use. Whereas it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there are things inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly regarded with a person utilising it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the several parts of the chair are named corresponding to the limbs of our human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the basic purpose of your chair is to support our body, its credit is evaluated principally on how fully it fulfills this practical purpose. Within the structure of a chair, the chair maker is restricted with some static laws and principal measurements. In these limitations, however, the chair creator has extensive freedom.

The history of the chair covers a period of several thousand years. There existed societies that created significant chair shapes, expressive of the topmost work in the spheres of skill and creativity. From those peoples, 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the structures of masterful make, are now seen from tomb findings. The first one of the two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The typical Egyptian chair had four legs designed as akin to those of some animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this design a durable triangular form was made. There was to our understanding no significant change from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical non-royals. The simple variation exists in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the particulars of more expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all likelihood was made for an easily portable seat for army officers. As a camp stool that type persevered until much later points in time. But the stool also played the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool being forgotten. This can today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats were formed from wood. The simple build of the folding stool, being of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and bear a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, also appeared somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this type is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, which is now seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The iconic Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not from any ancient fossil still existing but as in a trove of pictorial objects. The archetype is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location in outer Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which could be seen. These creative legs were presumably executed of bent wood and were likely to have been had extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely durable and were overtly signified.

The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; some statues of seated Romans display designs of a heavier and in appearance slightly crudely built klismos. Both types, light and heavy, were seen again in the Classicist era. The klismos influence is seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in special types of notable uniqueness within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The history of the chair in China cannot be tracked as well as chairs in Egypt and Greece. From the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed series of sketches and paintings was protected, with images of the interiors and exterior of Chinese homes and the designs of furniture. Kept also since the 16th century are a number of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing similarity to representations of ancient chairs.

As was the case in Egypt, there were two standard chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That chair is seen both with or without arms however never without the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one form, it has been seen, the stiles are marginally curved on top of the arms so as to conform correctly to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of the chairback). Together, the three parts are mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the idea of the Chinese back splat later had a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could merely to a limited extent support corner joints (as well as being loose as a result) represent an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which ends over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or possesses rounded edges—a left over perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and might have had a plaited form. These chairs required the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs likely were allowed only for elderly family members, for they were greatly esteemed.

The Chinese folding stool is understood to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is prettily affixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resultant effect of these two furniture forms is stylized. The construction and decoration aspects are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an upshot of the fact that the individual items do not seem to have been held together by use of either glue or screws, but are mortised with one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Artworks project a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some small iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, during the same time, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered design of chair can be found in engravings of 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 type of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the style actually started in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was produced 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 by a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely proportions and delicate upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of styles—that was, to say, as progressed in Paris around 1750—conquered most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and charm. The seat adheres to the human body and grants a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those use wood of fairly thick density; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more expensive designs might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative engraving. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used rather than upholstery.

English chairs in the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French manner for stylistic uniformity, which came from the aristocratic circles in Paris and Versailles over 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 reknowned 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 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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