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Of all furniture forms, the chair might be the most imperative. While the majority of other pieces (apart from the bed) are meant to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair is meant to be viewed here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to further makes like a bench or 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 evidently labeled.

The social history of the chair is as intriguing as its history as a creative art. The chair is not merely a physical support or an aesthetic craft; it historically is a symbol of social status. From the old royal courts there were plain signifiers between having a chair with arms, sitting on a chair with a back but no arms, or worse having to make do with a stool. In the recent century, the director’s and/or manager’s chair has been seen as iconic of superior position, and in democratic government debate the speaker sits on a high-set level.

As a furniture construction, the chair is employed for a number of different purposes. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical capabilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past times there were chairs used for birth (birth chairs); in 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 have chairs that can be folded, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

Contemporary lifestyle has developed special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All these chair types have adapted to match to changing human requirements. Because of its close relationship with man, the chair comes to its full meaning only when utilised. While it does not make a difference to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a dresser drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is understood and fairly evaluated with a person utilising it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the individual elements of a chair are labeled like the names of the human parts: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

Because the elementary job of your chair is to support a body, its credit is evaluated basically by how well it measures up to this practical function. In the structure of the chair, the maker is limited in particular static legislation and principal measurements. Through these rules, however, the chair builder has extensive freedom.

The history of the chair covers an era of several thousand years. There are peoples that made significant chair forms, as expressive of the leading object in the arenas of technique and creativity. Within these such cultures, particular mention 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 reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the upshot of skilled scheme, are now a finding from tombs. One of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs shaped similar to those of a designated animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported from vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular design was obtained. There was from our view no marked change in the creation of Egyptian thrones and chairs for regular citizens. The real variation exists in the intricacy of its ornamentation, in the evidence of pricey inlays. The Egyptian folding stool in all probability was manufactured for an easily packed seat for army officers. As a camp stool that kind persisted til much later periods. But the stool then also existed in the task of a ceremonial seat, its original history as a folding stool simply forgotten. This can now be observed, from as early as 1366 57 BC in two stools, formed in ebony with ivory inlay decoration and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were constructed in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded because the seats are created out of wood. The simple manufacture of the folding stool, being of two frames that spin on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric set between them, then came again some time later as the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best recognised of this kind is the folding stool, made of ashwood, now seen at Guldh j (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome
The archetypal Greek chair, the klismos, is known not as any ancient item still existing but from a wealth of pictorial items. The significant kind is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which are visible. These curved legs were considered to be created out of bent wood and were as such had to bear extreme pressure with the weight of the sitter. The joints securing the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore super durable and were visibly drawn.

The Romans borrowed from the Greek style; designs of statues of seated Romans are chairs of a more heavyset and are a slightly less intricately crafted klismos. Both styles, the light and the heavy, were popularised within the Classicist period. The klismos influence is seen in French Empire styles, in English Regency, and in some particular brands of considerable iconicism of Denmark and Sweden from 1800.

China
The history of the chair in China isn’t able to be followed as well as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the time of the Tang dynasty (AD 618 907) an unscathed series of images and artworks has been preserved, detailing the interior and exteriors of Chinese households and the furniture. Kept also from the 16th century are a trove of chairs made of wood or lacquered wood, that show an amazing resemblance to images of ancient chairs.

Same as in Egypt, there were two particular chair forms in China: a chair having four legs and a folding stool. This four-legged chair is seen both with or without arms but never missing the square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to firm the back. In one form, it must be said, the stiles had been marginally curved over the arms in order to fit the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of the chairback). Together, all three parts were mortised onto the yoke-like top rail. Though the design of this back splat exercised an introduction for English chairs during the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that would only to a limited limit embolden corner joints (and then are loose as a result) are an element exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs sit through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. Members are round in section or possesses rounded edges references maybe to the bamboo tradition. The seat is not pleasant and occasionally had a plaited texture. These chairs demanded of the sitter to be stiff and upright; for if too much weight is forced on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese houses of this period armchairs likely were kept for the senior persons in the family, for they were given great esteem.

The Chinese folding stool is believed to have travelled to China from the West. It is akin that much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a change in that the top rail is intricately affixed to the two legs of the stool in a curved member, which is usually designed with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these furniture items is stylized. The manufacture and decorative aspects are combined in a manner that is all at once both na ve and refined. The piecemeal appearance is an outcome of the fact that the individual parts do not seem to have been put together with either glue or screws, but were mortised into one another and fixed in its place in the manner 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, having only two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to show up a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a corresponding board in the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Therefore the chair was a portable piece of furniture when traveling which, in the same period, gave the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be evidenced in engravings of the interiors of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, as well as in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair can also be seen in countries in which Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not held that the design actually began in The Netherlands. Typically, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender measurements; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is obviously a bourgeois piece of furniture and was manufactured in vast amounts, as surmisable from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of this kind of chairs lined up along a wall. The design asserts itself by virtue of its elegant proportions and fine 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, to say, as brought out in Paris around 1750 conquered most of Europe and has been imitated or copied during the mid-20th century. The design owes such 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 little upholstered pads over the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed solidly on craftsmanlike methods even with the absence of stretchers between the legs.

French Rococo chairs and imitations of those employ wood of rather thick measurements; but each member is deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been sanded away, and finer chairs would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry should be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is occasionally used instead of upholstery.

English chairs of the 18th century were more differentiated in style than the French. The French touch for stylistic uniformity, which lead from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles within most of France and was popular in several 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 Eug ne Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaud 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 M tro.

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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