The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or aesthetic artwork; it was historically symbolic of social hierarchy. In the historical royal courts there were clear distinctions between possessing a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but without arms, or worse having to sit on a stool. From the past century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has developed a symbol of superior status, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised level.

As a furniture form, the chair encompasses a variety of different purposes. There are chairs designed to match man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). From historical times there were chairs for births (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs 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 can have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Modern living has derived special chairs for use in automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair kinds has been adapted to fit to evolving human uses. For its close connection with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when in employ. Although it doesn’t make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a set of drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is understood best and fairly tested with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter require one another. Thus the individual parts of a chair were given names likened to the parts of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the simple purpose of your chair is to support the body, its worth is evaluated principally for how suitably it does fulfill this practical job. Within the structure of the chair, the builder is limited by some static law and principal measurements. Within these boundaries, however, the chair creator has great freedom.

The history of the chair was an epoch of several thousand years. There are peoples that had made iconic chair forms, as expressive of the topmost task in the arenas of technique and design. Within such societies, a 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 ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of masterful design, were known from findings made in tombs. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair would have had four legs shaped similar to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a solid triangular structure was crafted. There was from our knowledge no significant differentiation in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary non-royals. The simple difference exists in the complex ornamentation, in the choice of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was developed for an easily packed seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool the stool stayed during much later periods of time. But the stool also was created for the role of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool ignored or forgotten. This can from today be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the form of folding stools but can not be folded because the seats were made with wood. The simple make of the folding stool, composed of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, is seen again at some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The better recognised of this type is the folding stool, crafted from ashwood, which is now at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is found not in any ancient object still around but as seen in a wealth of pictorial evidence. The significant kind is the klismos displayed 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, only two of these legs would be shown. These curved legs were most likely to have been executed from bent wood and were likely to have been put under extreme pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super durable and were visibly signified.

The Romans adopted the Greek chair; a number of casts of seated Romans display evidence of a denser and apparently kind of more crudely constructed klismos. Both features, the light or heavy, were revived during the Classicist period. The klismos style can be evidenced in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some types of notable originality within Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be followed as far as that of Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed series of drawings and artworks was protected, showing the inside and exteriors of Chinese homes and their furniture. Also kept since the 16th century are some chairs crafted of wood or lacquered wood, that hold an interesting likeness to styles of older chairs.

Just like in Egypt, two major chair forms existed in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is found both with or without arms although never missing a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one type, it must be said, the stiles are lightly curved by the arms in order to sit correctly with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the main upright of the chairback). All three limbs are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Although the style of a back splat had a foundation for English chairs within the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that merely to a restricted capability support corner joints (and then were loose into the bargain) are a design particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. Each member is round in section or possesses rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and may have a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to remain stiff and upright; if too much weight is pushed on the back, the chair has a habit of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this era armchairs most likely were kept only for the senior individuals in the family, for they were greatly respected.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It does not vary much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a difference in that the top rail is prettily fixed to the two legs of the stool with a curved member, which is usually provided with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both these furniture items is stylized. The constructive and aesthetic issues are combined in a way that is both naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is an outcome of the manner that the individual parts do not seem to have been held together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised on one another and held in place in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain in the 17th century also put its mark on the chair. Artworks display a style of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Therefore the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, during the same era, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be found in engravings of interiors of wealthy Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. While this design of chair can also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the design actually originated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in considerable amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of those chairs lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself with its shapely 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 was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of relaxation and charm. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed seated position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Generally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methodology even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of fairly thick measurements; but all the members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been taken away, and more expensive designs may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood could be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is generally used for all of the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French preference for stylistic uniformity, which came from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the favourite 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 styles 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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