History enthusiasts pull up a chair at Heritage Museum exhibition exploring the role of seating as a cultural artefact

Slightly faded and elegantly curved, the wooden stool appears small and unassuming - for a 3,000-year-old relic from ancient Egypt, that is.

"Tutankhamen's tomb had one almost identical, [but] it's broken," said Naomi Szeto, Hong Kong Heritage Museum curator. "It's in fantastic condition."

On loan from the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the stool is the oldest of 100 or so chairs on display at The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: Chairs for Viewing the World through Time, an exhibition at the museum in Sha Tin which opened on June 7.

Featuring chairs from nine leading museums around the world, the exhibition explores the role of chairs as cultural artefacts. It is part of a larger event on the theme of chairs at the museum called Please Have a Seat.

Visitors can learn about the artistic and practical uses of chairs in civilisations throughout history and how people interacted with one another, as well as their values and traditions.

"In the past 10 hours, is there anyone who hasn't sat down in a chair?" asked Szeto, who came up with the idea for the exhibition. "We don't realise it, but we are in contact with chairs all the time."

Although Szeto admitted to not possessing a particular fascination with chairs, her passion for social history led her to come up with the idea for the show two years ago. "I always put everyday objects in [their] cultural and social context," Szeto said.