Chairs: A History

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” In Chairs: A History, furniture historian Florence de Dampierre presents a wonderfully readable and visually stunning exploration of chairs and their place in culture through the ages. Along with hundreds of gorgeous photographs—many taken specifically for this book—de Dampierre fills these pages with fascinating information and anecdotes, tracing the chair’s emergence in ancient Egypt and examining various forms of seating from classical Greece, the Roman Empire, and the Renaissance era, to the classic designs of today.

From thrones to divans, straightbacked to overstuffed, Baroque to Bauhaus, this beautiful volume will delight anyone who’s ever taken a seat and wondered where it came from.