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From all the furniture objects, the chair might be the imperative one. While the majority of other pieces (apart from the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is viewed here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to complex pieces like the bench or sofa, which might be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not evidently distinuishable.

The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or an aesthetic object; it historically was a signifier of social ranking. From the past royal courts there were significant differences between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, or having to sit on a stool. During the last century, a director’s or manager’s chair has been regarded as a symbol of superior dignity, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on an elevated level.

In a furniture creation, the chair can be used for a variety of various forms. There are chairs designed to suit man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to indicate his status in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since historical times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); from the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We make chairs with one, two, three, and/or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We can have chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Contemporary lifestyle has derived new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair types has changed to match to changing human desires. From its significant connection with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when used. Though it doesn’t make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly judged with a person using it, because chair and sitter complement the other. Thus the different elements of a chair have been labeled as the elements of our human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the elemental job of your chair is to support your body, its credit is tested firstly by how fully it does fulfill this practical role. In the manufacture of the chair, the maker is restricted for particular static law and principal measurements. In these rules, however, the chair maker has large freedom.

The history of the chair covered dates of several thousand years. There existed cultures that had made iconic chair forms, expressive of the premier object in the arenas of technique and design. Among these such societies, particular note 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 result of skilled design, are today found from tombs. The first 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 like those of a particular animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. From this a durable triangular construction was made. There appears to be no notable difference in the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular people. The simple variation lies in the complex ornamentation, in the selection of expensive inlays. The Egyptian folding stool likely was crafted as an easily carried seat for soldiers. As a camp stool the chair persevered during much later points. But the stool also was made for the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical history as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can from today be seen, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay ornamentation and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the form of folding stools but cannot be folded because the seats are formed of wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, made of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, came up somewhat later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not as any ancient object still extant but as seen from a large amount of pictorial items. The better recognised is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of these legs can be displayed. These curved legs were thought to be manufactured in bent wood and were thus needed to bear extreme pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat would have been therefore extremely durable and were overtly signified.

The Romans emulated the Greek designs; existing models of seated Romans offer chairs of a heavier and which appear to be a rather less delicately built klismos. Both designs, the light or heavy, were brought back as part of the Classicist epoch. The klismos chair can be found in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some special types of considerable individuality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The ancestry of the chair in China can not be tracked as far back as the ancestry of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed serial of drawings and paintings has been kept, with images of the interior and outside of Chinese houses and their furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a collection of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that display an astonishing resemblance to images of past chairs.

Just like in Egypt, two fundamental chair forms existed in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair has been designed both with or without arms though always with a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to give support to the back. In one image, however, the stiles could be slightly curved by the arms to sit right with the form of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of the back). Together, the three parts had been mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Although the idea of a back splat then had a foundation for English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden pieces that could only to a restricted extent support corner joints (and furthermore were loose additionally) represent a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs are set through the seat frame, which closes around the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—acknowledging as may be to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and had on occasion a plaited form. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; for if too much weight is placed on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this epoch armchairs likely were only for elderly people in the family, for they were greatly esteemed.

The Chinese folding stool is believed to have come to China from the West. It does not differ that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is more often than not designed with metal mounts. From a Western perspective the resulting effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decorative issues are combined in a manner that is at the same time naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the way that the individual parts do not seem to have been put together with either glue or screws, but are mortised on one another and locked into place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Paintings display a style of chair with a relatively unrefined wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, with two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of small pads. The front board and a related board at the back could be folded after unscrewing some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, during the same era, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered kind of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the interior of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this kind of chair might also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won acclaim, it is not believed that the style actually started 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 patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in impressive amounts, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of these chairs lined up against a wall. The style asserts itself with its harmonious proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature form—that is, as progressed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The chair owes such popularity to a combination of leisure and delicacy. The seat conforms to the human body and allows a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike practices even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of them have wood of rather thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and more upmarket items might be further embellished with special delicate and decorative carving. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used instead of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in design than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the most distinguished 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 popularised 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 versions 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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