The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support and/or an aesthetic piece of art; it historically is a signifier of social ranking. At the old royal courts there were important signifiers between being seated on a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or having to squat on a stool. Since the recent century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has become iconic of superior dignity, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a higher platform.

In a furniture construction, the chair can be utilised for a number of different forms. There are chairs created to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical days there were chairs used for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (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 have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Modern living has demanded new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms has perfected to conform to different human desires. Because of its close connection with man, the chair lives to its full purpose only when utilised. Whereas it is irrelevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there are things inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly tested by a person sitting in it, because chair and sitter require each other. Thus the various elements of the chair were given labels as the elements of a human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the original work of a chair is to support the human body, its worth is evaluated basically from how fully it fulfills this practical function. Within the creation of a chair, the designer is limited for the static laws and principal measurements. Through these restrictions, however, the chair creator has marvellous freedom.

The history of the chair is dates of several thousand years. There existed cultures that held iconic chair types, seen of the principal endeavour in the arenas of skill and aesthetics. From these such cultures, particular mention 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 lifetimes of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of masterful make, are today found from tomb discoveries. The first of these two is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have four legs structured as akin to those of a chosen animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported with vertical stretchers. In this way a stable triangular design was obtained. There seems to be no marked differentiation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary people. The general difference lies in the intricacy of ornamentation, in the evidence of pricier inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was designed as an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool this type stayed til much later times. But the stool then was created for the use of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be seen, 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 in the form of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats are made from wood. The plain construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric set between them, was then seen somewhat later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better known of this type is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient fossil still around but in a large amount of pictorial items. The most well known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which were displayed. These strange legs were likely to have been crafted of bent wood and were likely to have been bore huge pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore very stable and were plainly signified.

The Romans borrowed from the Greek design; existing statues of seated Romans offer evidence of a more heavyset and apparently kind of more crudely designed klismos. Both styles, the light or heavy, were seen again within the Classicist period. The klismos chair is used in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular kinds of considerable originality in Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China cannot be traced as far back as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of images and paintings was kept, detailing the insides and outside of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Also preserved of the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing similarity to designs of previous chairs.

Just the same as in Egypt, there existed two iconic chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is designed both with or without arms however never missing the square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to firm the back. In one design, it has been found, the stiles could be marginally curved above the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). Together, all three limbs are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the idea of this back splat later had an influence on English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden items that could merely to a restricted capability stabilise corner joints (and furthermore are loose in the bargain) signify a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes around the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—referable maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited seat. These chairs demanded of the sitter to hold themselves stiff and upright; for when too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs likely were kept only for the senior individuals, for they were held in great respect.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have travelled to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool by a curved member, which is generally designed with metal mounts. From a Western point of view the overall effect of both these furniture styles is stylized. The manufacture and decoration parts are combined in a way that is at the same time naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the way that the individual items do not look to have been held together by means of either glue or screws, but had been mortised on one another and held in its place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also had its mark on the chair. Paintings show a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same time, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is found in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this design of chair can also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are sometimes 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 an entire row of those chairs lined up by a wall. The form asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and fine 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 is to say, as developed in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The style owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are stable, constructed on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them employ wood of rather thick measurements; but every member is deeply molded, all extra wood has been removed, and more expensive examples can be further embellished with highly delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is in some cases used rather than upholstery.

English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and found favour in several 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 commonly known and was widely distributed throughout the world.

Late 18th to 20th century
In 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, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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