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Folding Chairs in History

No one knows exactly when they were invented, but once they were, for many centuries they were prized as a status symbol and regarded as one of the most important pieces of household furniture.

Folding chairs did not always exist. No one knows exactly when they were invented, but once they were, for many centuries they were prized as a status symbol and regarded as one of the most important pieces of household furniture. The folding chair was not used simply for sitting on, either, at first, but also for conducting religious, military, and clan ceremonies. It was literally the seat of honor. Today, the only folding chair that stirs the imagination beyond the mundane is the Hollywood director's chair, which is associated with celebrity and glamour.

Before folding chairs and stools, the leader of a tribe or clan probably sat on a stump or rock and the tribesmen sat or squatted on the ground below him, thus establishing the clan hierarchy. The earliest records on manmade seating devices come from Mesopotamia, where sculptures and cylinder seals from 3500 to 2800 B.C. show people sitting on various types of benches and stools. The stools were boxy with seats of woven rush and carved bull legs. From 2600 to 1150 B.C., stools were depicted with straight legs and a forward-sloping seat of five to ten degrees. Today’s ergonomists promote the forward-sloping seat as a way of maintaining good posture without strain. The cross-legged stool didn’t appear in Mesopotamia until about 2370 B.C. Until about 1595, stools were the main furniture depicted in Mesopotamian households.

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