From each of the furniture forms, the chair might be paramount. While most of the other forms (except the bed) are devised to support objects, the chair supports a human form. The term chair is said here in the larger sense, from stool to throne to complex forms like the bench or sofa, which should be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly definitive.

The social history of the chair is as curious as its history as art and craft. The chair is not just a physical support or an aesthetic creation; it historically is a symbol of social rank. Within the Medieval royal courts there were plain differences between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but no arms, and having to use a stool. In the recent century, a director’s or manager’s chair has developed iconic of superior standing, like in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a raised level.

As its furniture creation, the chair can be utilised for a wealth of various forms. There are chairs created to match man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his rank in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the past there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); since the 20th century, there have been chairs used for ending life (the electric chair). There are 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 for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Our lifestyle has demanded new chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Every one of these chair kinds has evolved to suit to changing human requirements. From its significant link with man, the chair exists to its full advantage only when in use. While it does not make any difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there might be anything inside or not, a chair is really understood and regarded best by a person utilising it, because chair and sitter complement each other. Thus the various elements of a chair are named corresponding to the areas of a human form: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the elementary work of the chair is to support the body, its worth is valued firstly for how completely it fulfills this practical purpose. In the construction of the chair, the designer is bound by some static regulation and principal measurements. Under these limitations, however, the chair designer has great freedom.

The history of the chair lasted over dates of several thousand years. There are peoples that held unique chair shapes, as expressions of the foremost endeavour in the industries of handling and creativity. Within these societies, particular note needs to 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 objects of skilled scheme, are now known from tomb findings. First of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The iconic Egyptian chair had four legs crafted as akin to those of a particular animal, a curved seat, and with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this a strong triangular construction was crafted. There was in our view no noteworthy variation in the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common citizens. The simple change lies in the level of ornamentation, in the particulars of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool most probably was made for an easily packed seat for army soldiers. As a camp stool this stool continued until much later points. But the stool also then took on the role of a ceremonial seat, its technical job as a folding stool being forgotten. This can now be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, crafted in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the structure of folding stools but can not be folded as the seats are made with wood. The plain build of the folding stool, composed of two frames that rotate on metal bolts and hold a seat of leather or fabric held between them, then appeared but somewhat later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of these is the folding stool, crafted out of ashwood, seen at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is seen not with any ancient specimen still around but as seen from a trove of pictorial evidence. The best recognised is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial location near Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, but only two of those would be shown. These odd legs were likely to have been created out of bent wood and were in that case had great pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints joining the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore very stable and were clearly drawn.

The Romans adopted the Greek style; quite a few models of seated Romans are chairs of a thicker and which appear to be a somewhat crudely constructed klismos. Both types, the light and heavy, were popularised within the Classicist era. The klismos style can be seen in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some kinds of considerable individuality within Denmark and Sweden around 1800.

China
The progression of the chair in China isn’t able to be charted as far as the progression of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an undamaged serial of sketches and paintings has been kept safe, detailing the inside and exteriors of Chinese buildings and the designs of furniture. Another preservation since the 16th century are a trove of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that bear an amazing resemblance to styles of older chairs.

Just the same as in Egypt, there was two major chair designs in China: a chair of four legs and a folding stool. That four-legged chair is constructed both with or without arms but always with the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to give support to the back. In one form, it has been found, the stiles could be marginally curved by the arms for the purpose of sit correctly with the structure of the S-shaped back splat (the centre upright of a back). Each of the three areas were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. While the innovation of this back splat had a foundation for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that only to a restricted limit support corner joints (as well as being loose in the result) signify an element signatory to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which finishes about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or is given rounded edges—referable perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not comfortable and occasionally had a plaited seat. These chairs needed the sitter to stay stiff and upright; if too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a way of toppling. In patriarchal Chinese households of this epoch armchairs probably were kept for senior members of the family, for they were greatly esteemed.

The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It does not differ much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is delicately affixed to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is more often than not seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the resulting effect of both these furniture designs is stylized. The manufacture and aesthetic parts are combined in a way that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual members do not look to have been joined together by use of either glue or screws, but had been mortised into one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain of the 17th century also put its name on the chair. Paintings display a kind of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between, stitched to show up a pattern of small pads. The front board and a similar board at the back could be folded after loosening some little iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture when traveling which, at the same era, gave the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair can be displayed in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Though this style of chair is also seen in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the design actually was born in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair were smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is patently a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in impressive quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which an entire row of this kind of chairs lined up against a wall. The design asserts itself with its shapely proportions and expensive 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, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated through most of Europe and was imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The chair owes this popularity to a combination of relaxation and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and allows 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 covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back cover all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof are constructed from wood of fairly thick density; but all members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and finer designs might be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carvings. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is usually used for any upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; crosshatched cane is sometimes used as an alternative to upholstery.

English chairs from the 18th century were more differentiated in form than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the premier circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popular 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 commonly known 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 products 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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