Get your mind around this hypothesis. You are invited to dinner with your partner, along with four other people - a total of eight including your host and his wife. There will be a session of card-playing afterwards, finishing off with a movie on your host's new home theatre system.

Unfortunately, for the last 30 years, all the chair makers in the country have been on strike and you have to enjoy the evening without any chairs to sit on. See what I mean: you arrive at your host's place, welcoming drinks, all very nice. Go into dinner, beautifully laid out table. Have to stand to eat your meal. Retire to the card room, stand up for a few hands of whist. Finally, stand through your all-time film favourite, "Gone With The Wind" for over three hours.

My offbeat way of giving an example of how much we take chairs for granted and how a normally pleasurable evening out could turn into a nightmare without their presence.

Chairs can come in different forms as we know, in industry, at home, medicine, punishment and other branches of society. Let's take a look at some of the more popular (or unpopular) uses of this piece of furniture.

Think of something that we all do from time to time, visit the dentist. What is the dreaded thing we have to sit in while waiting for him to perform his nerve-tingling professional duties? Chairs that we use day by day in our homes are so far removed from this piece of equipment as doesn't matter, but they are equally chairs. Yet the way we sit and relax in one could in no way be compared to the other.

Let's get morbid for a moment and think of another use for a chair. The electric chair. Incidentally, as you probably know - this particular form of execution equipment was invented by a dentist. It is probably the most fearsome type of chair that has ever been manufactured. No relaxing here, just a certain finality and a piece of equipment to perform a final gruesome act.

I will give one more example from times gone by. During the days of witch hunts and religious zealousness, a chair was used on more than one occasion to seat a woman who was found guilty of this very "crime". This procedure was followed - if she was very lucky - being ducked into a deep vat of water to try to purge the demons from her soul. If she wasn't so lucky and the "court" so deemed, piles of kindling and flammable material were placed around the chair and she was simply burned to death, the chair attacked to a stake - hence burned at the stake.

We have above, a few examples of the way the chair has been developed - and in some cases revamped - to suit various needs. It wouldn't be foolish to say that more uses will be found for them as time moves on. I personally find that one of the most pleasurable things is coming home from work on a cold evening, house nice and warm, coffee in hand and sinking into my favourite chair. Heaven!

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to Chairs