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Out of each of the furniture needs, the chair could be paramount. While the majority of other objects (save the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports our human form. The term chair can be regarded here in the largest sense, from stool to throne to derivative makes including a bench or sofa, which can be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly defined.

The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as a creative craft. The chair is not simply a physical support or an aesthetic piece of art; it was also semiotic of social hierarchy. At the old royal courts there were clear connotations between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to cope with a stool. During the 20th century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as an indicator of superior status, as well as in democratic governments the speaker sits on a high-set level.

In its furniture purpose, the chair is employed for a number of different forms. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical form (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In past times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (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 up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our contemporary lifestyle has demanded special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair shapes have been evolved to fit to differing human uses. For its close association with man, the chair appears to its full purpose only when being utilised. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and tested by a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter need one another. Thus the various limbs of a chair have been labeled likened to the names of a human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the simple role of a chair is to support the human body, its credit is judged primarily from how suitably it does fulfill this practical job. In the manufacture of the chair, the carpenter is restricted within the static law and principal measurements. Under these rules, however, the chair creator has awesome freedom.

The history of the chair lasted over dates of several thousand years. There are cultures that had made individual chair types, expressions of the topmost craft in the arenas of technique and aesthetics. In these such societies, a 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the items of careful scheme, are known from tomb discoveries. The first of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have had four legs shaped not unlike those of some animal, a curved seat, and leading to a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular design was crafted. There appears to be no particular change from the design of Egyptian thrones and chairs for typical people. The real difference lies in the complex ornamentation, in the evidence of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was created to be an easily stored seat for officers. As a camp stool this form existed until much later days. But the stool also then existed in the purpose of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical task as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can from today’s evidence be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were made in the structure of folding stools but can’t be folded because the seats were formed with wood. The simple structure of the folding stool, composed of two frames that cycle on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric secured between them, came again but some time later from the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognisable of those is the folding stool, made from ashwood, which can now be seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is found not as any ancient specimen still existing but as in a trove of pictorial items. The best known is the klismos placed on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial ground near Athens (c. 410 BC). This klismos is a chair that had a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those legs were visible. These creative legs were probably created from bent wood and were in that case bore extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat would have had to be therefore super stable and were particularly drawn.

The Romans embued the Greek chair; quite a few models of seated Romans show examples of a thicker and which appear to be a rather less intricately constructed klismos. Both kinds, the light and heavy, were revived within the Classicist period. The klismos chair is seen in French Empire design, in English Regency, and in particular forms of notable originality of Denmark and Sweden circa 1800.

China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be tracked as far back as in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged series of sketches and paintings had been protected, with images of the interiors and outer parts of Chinese homes and their furniture. Preserved also from the 16th century are a number of chairs crafted from wood or lacquered wood, that display an intriguing similarity to designs of ancient chairs.

Just like in Egypt, there existed two fundamental chair designs in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. That chair is constructed both with or without arms though always having a square seat and straight stiles (straight side supports) to give support to the back. In one type, it must be said, the stiles could be lightly curved over the arms so as to conform to the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a back). Together, all three areas were mortised into the yoke-like top rail. Although the innovation of the Chinese back splat later had an influence on English chairs in the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could merely to a restricted ability support corner joints (and furthermore are loose to top that off) represent a signature particular to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes over the rounded staves. Every member is round in section or is given rounded edges—references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is unpleasant to sit in and had on occasion a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for when too much pressure is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this epoch armchairs most likely were kept for older individuals in the family, for they were held in great respect.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have been brought to China from the West. It is not dissimilar so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a change in that the top rail is prettily joined to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is often designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and decorative aspects are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The patched up appearance is a result of the fact that the individual parts do not seem to have been fixed with either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and held in place in the style of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also had its name on the chair. Paintings project a style of chair with a relatively brusque wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. In this way the chair was a portable piece of furniture in traveling which, at the same era, possessed the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is evidenced 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 type of chair might also be made in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won critical acclaim, it is not held that the innovation actually originated in The Netherlands. Generally, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of thin measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast amounts, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of these chairs lined up by a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric edged 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—spread over most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The design owes the popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are tiny upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions are found between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are strongly constructed on craftsmanlike principles even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those have wood of quite thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all extra wood has been cut away, and finer items might be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood can be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is in some cases used instead of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which disseminated from the royal circles in Paris and Versailles through most of France and found favour 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 popular 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, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

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