"Like any genealogy, the chair’s is rife with parallel strains, stubs, objects of dubious origin, mythologies and strange connections."

In his latest book, Now I Sit Me Down, architect and writer Witold Rybczynski explores the history of the chair as an allegory of human evolution. “The astonishing historical variety of chairs is as much due to our intimate relationship with them as to functional imperatives,” Rybczynski writes. By focusing so intensely on one thing—an exceedingly common object, the chair—Rybczynski charts a complex history driven as much by aesthetic caprice as tradition, craftsmanship and the immutable needs of the body.

History is littered with examples of furniture that were neither beautiful nor functional, but which advanced the development of design in some meaningful way. Like any genealogy, the chair’s is rife with parallel strains, stubs, objects of dubious origin, mythologies and st...