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From each of the furniture items, the chair may be the most imperative. While the majority of other forms (save for the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is intended to be viewed here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to complex types for example a bench and sofa, which should be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly defined.

The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support and/or an aesthetic item; it historically is symbolic of social hierarchy. From the old royal courts there were social distinctions between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to use a stool. During the last century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been a symbol of superior position, and even in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised level.

In a furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a range of various models. There are chairs structured to attend to man’s age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to connotate his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since the past there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). We design chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can make chairs that can be folded and put away, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Contemporary lifestyle has derived particular chairs in automobiles and aircraft. Each of these chair forms has been perfected to fit to changing human uses. From its close association with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when in use. Although it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers if there might be items inside or not, a chair is really seen best and fairly evaluated by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the different parts of the chair are given names like the elements of the human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the basic function of the chair is to support our body, its worth is valued generally from how suitably it does fulfill this practical function. Within the construction of the chair, the designer is restricted for certain static regulation and principal measurements. Within these limits, however, the chair designer has great freedom.

The history of the chair covered an epoch of several thousand years. There were civilizations that have created significant chair shapes, as seen of the principal task in the industries of skill and art. Among those societies, particular 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 upshot of expert design, are now seen from tombs. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair had four legs shaped as akin to those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this design a strong triangular construction was obtained. There was apparently no significant differentiation between the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common peasantry. The real difference lied in the decorative ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was made as an easily packed seat for army. As a camp stool that stool stayed for much later periods of time. But the stool also then played the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical role as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can already be found, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are made in the form of folding stools but can’t be folded as the seats were made of wood. The simple build of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, is seen again some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this form is the folding stool, made of ashwood, now found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The unique Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient specimen still in form but as seen from a variety of pictorial items. The archetype is the klismos drawn on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location by Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those can be shown. These curving legs were most likely to have been created with bent wood and were probably had extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very stable and were particularly indicated.

The Romans emulated the Greek designs; some statues of seated Romans display evidence of a denser and apparently somewhat more crudely constructed klismos. Both features, the light and the heavy, were popularised during the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair is evidenced in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular forms of notable individuality within Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be charted as far as in Egypt and Greece. From the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged collection of sketches and artworks was preserved, showing the inside and outside of Chinese houses and their furniture. Another preservation from the 16th century are a trove of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that show an interesting familiarity to styles of older chairs.

Like in Egypt, there were two particular chair forms in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This chair can be found both with and without arms but never without the square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to hold up the back. In one style, it has been seen, the stiles had been slightly curved on top of the arms to sit right with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a back). Each of the three limbs had been mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of the Chinese back splat later had a foundation for English chairs of the Queen Anne period, wooden items that would merely to a restricted extent stabilise corner joints (as well as being loose in the bargain) indicate a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or has rounded edges—an acknowledgement perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much weight is exerted on the back, the chair has a way of toppling over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs presumably were kept only for elderly individuals in the family, for they were given great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have come to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a dissimilarity in that the top rail is delicately held to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is more often than not provided with metal mounts. From a Western understanding the overall effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decorative elements are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual members do not seem to have been put together by means of either glue or screws, but were mortised onto one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Works of art show a type of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to produce a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was a portable piece of furniture while traveling which, in the same period, held the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair is seen in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and also in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this type of chair can also be seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not decided that the innovation actually began in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slim measurements; they are occasionally baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive quantities, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a whole row of these chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself with its elegant proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that was, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and delicacy. The seat conforms 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 tiny upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions are achieved between seat frame, legs, and back conceal all the joints, which are constructed on craftsmanlike practices despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them are constructed from wood of quite thick dimensions; but every member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been removed, and more expensive items might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carvings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry might be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is sometimes used rather than upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more varied in form than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which came from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and became the favourite 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
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 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, purport that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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