furniture

furniture
—furnitureless, adj.
/ferr"ni cheuhr/, n.
1. the movable articles, as tables, chairs, desks or cabinets, required for use or ornament in a house, office, or the like.
2. fittings, apparatus, or necessary accessories for something.
3. equipment for streets and other public areas, as lighting standards, signs, benches, or litter bins.
4. Also called bearer, dead metal. Print. pieces of wood or metal, less than type high, set in and about pages of type to fill them out and hold the type in place in a chase.
[1520-30; < F fourniture, deriv. of fournir to FURNISH]

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I
Household equipment designed for a variety of purposes.

It may be made of wood, metal, plastics, stone, glass, fabrics, and related materials. It ranges from the simple pine chest or country chair to the elaborate marquetry-work cabinet or gilded console table. It is usually movable, though it can be built in, as are kitchen cabinets and bookcases. Stylistically it is related to architecture and interior design. Throughout history the functional and decorative aspects of furniture have been influenced by economics and fashion. In the 14th–18th century, furniture making flourished with ever-increasing affluence. In the 1920s and '30s architects designed chairs made of modern materials such as tubular steel and plastic. See also bentwood furniture; Early American furniture; Shaker furniture.
II
(as used in expressions)

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Introduction

      household equipment, usually made of wood, metal, plastics, marble, glass, fabrics, or related materials and having a variety of different purposes. Furniture ranges widely from the simple pine chest or stick-back country chair to the most elaborate marquetry work cabinet or gilded console table. The functional and decorative aspects of furniture have been emphasized more or less throughout history according to economics and fashion. Chairs are always for sitting in, but some are more comfortable or highly ornamented than others. Accessory furnishings are smaller subsidiary items such as clocks, mirrors, tapestries, fireplaces, panelling, and other items complementary to an interior scheme.

      The word furniture comes from the French fourniture, which means equipment. In most other European languages, however, the corresponding word (German Möbel; French meuble; Spanish mueble; Italian mobile) is derived from the Latin adjective mobilis, meaning movable. The continental terms describe the intrinsic character of furniture better than the English word. To be furniture, it must be movable. Since furniture presupposes some degree of residential permanency, however, it is understandable that no independent furniture types seem to have been developed among the Melanesians or the Inuit in Greenland or the Mongolian nomads in Asia.

      In general, furniture produced in the past 5,000 years has not undergone innovative development in any functional sense. An Egyptian folding stool dating from about 1500 BC fulfills the same functional requirements and possesses the same basic features as a modern one. Only in the mid-20th century, with entirely new, synthetic materials such as plastic and completely new fabrication techniques such as casting, have there been signs of a radical revision of the concept of furniture.

General considerations

Materials
      Wood is the material most often used for making furniture. Although there are over a hundred different kinds that can be used for furniture, some woods have natural properties that make them superior to the others.

      A relatively cheap material, wood lends itself to various kinds of treatment; for example, it can be stained, painted, gilded, and glued. It can be shaped by means of hand- or power-operated cutting and drilling tools. Heated, it can be bent to a certain extent into a predetermined shape and thereafter will retain the shape. The grain in wood creates a structure with varying character, which in itself provides a natural ornamental surface, in which patterns can be formed by means of precalculated juxtapositions. Colours range from white, yellow, green, red, brown, gray to black through countless intermediary tones. By juxtaposing wood of different colours, extremely rich effects have been achieved, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries. Wood, if stored under favourable conditions, is durable, and pieces of furniture from the oldest civilizations—Egypt, for example—are still extant. Lastly, most wood has an aromatic scent.

      Developments in the sphere of craftsmanship and mechanical techniques, during the past 200 years or so, have made furniture production both cheaper and quicker. Using timber as a basis and applying techniques such as shredding, heating and glueing, it has been possible to evolve new materials. To an increasing extent, cabinetmakers and furniture factories are using semi-manufactured wood such as veneer, carcass wood, plywood, laminated board, and hardboard (fibreboard).

      Veneer is a very thin layer of particularly fine wood that has been glued on to inferior wood in order to produce a smooth and attractive surface. It would hardly be possible to achieve such a surface by using solid wood, partly because of the expense, partly because of its brittleness, and partly because the grain can never be shown off to its best advantage when the timber is cut into solid boards.

      The practice of veneering furniture has been known since the time of pharaonic Egypt, but it was not fully exploited until the beginning of the 18th century. During the Rococo (Rococo style) period, especially, great virtuosity was displayed by the craftsman in the veneering of curving, concave, and convex surfaces; for instance, as found on chests of drawers.

      Veneer is made by sawing, machine-cutting, and peeling. Saw-cut veneer is of the highest quality, but because of the relatively large loss of wood in the form of sawdust, it is also the most expensive. Therefore, furniture veneer, as a rule, is machine-cut.

      Veneering is done on carcass wood, either in the form of a solid surface or a surface composed of several layers glued together. Old furniture is nearly always veneered on solid wood of an inferior quality to the veneer, such as beech, oak, or deal. High-quality English mahogany furniture made in the 18th century, however, was veneered with mahogany on mahogany. In the 20th century, machine-made laminated board of various thicknesses is generally used. The advantage of ready-made laminated board is that it does not shrink. Wood expands and contracts in various ways, and its strength can vary axially, radially, or tangentially; by blocking the wood—i.e., glueing pieces of wood together in different directions—such differences are eliminated and equal strength is obtained both longitudinally and laterally. The characteristic feature of laminated board is that the veneer on both sides encloses a wooden board composed of narrow strips of wood glued together on edge. The board is therefore thick enough to be suitable for table tops or doors.

      If laminated board consists only of single sheets of veneer glued together, it is known as plywood. Plywood is widely used in the manufacture of furniture, particularly as backing for chests and other storage pieces, for the bottoms of drawers, and for shelves.

      Metals have been used since antiquity for making and ornamenting furniture. Splendid Egyptian pieces, such as the thrones and stool that were found in the tomb of the youthful Tutankhamen (14th century BC), were rich in gold mounts (decorative details). In ancient Greece, bronze (bronze work), iron, and silver were used for making furniture. Finds that were buried in the ashes of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy included tables with folding underframes and beds made partly or entirely of metal.

      Throughout the Middle Ages the metal chair—for example, the 7th-century throne belonging to Dagobert I, king of the Franks—was used for special ceremonies.

      Various examples of silver furniture have been preserved; not solid metal, they consist of embossed (embossing) (decorated with relief) or chased (hammered) plates of silver fastened to a wooden core. Silver furniture was made for palaces in the days when monarchs amassed enormous wealth. In times of war, the silver mountings were melted down and turned into silver coins; it was thus that all the silver furniture disappeared from the royal palaces of France.

      During the 18th and 19th centuries, iron furniture became a typical industrial product. Iron beds in particular became popular. Because they could be easily folded up, they were much in demand as camp beds; one used by Napoleon at St. Helena is a famous example. As ordinary beds in private homes or hotels, they could be decorated with brass ornaments such as big knobs screwed onto their posts. Iron has also been used for chairs (chair); for instance, rocking chairs or, perhaps more frequently, garden chairs that can stand out in the rain, protected only by a coat of paint.

      The possibilities of steel for furniture were explored in Germany during the 1920s, notably by architects associated with the Bauhaus, where architects, designers, and artists experimented with modern materials. Experiments were made with steel springs and chromiumplated steel tubing. The genre was soon imitated, and tubular steel furniture became a symbol of functionalism. Since then, thinner tubing and plaited wire, with a resiliency similar to that found in wickerwork chairs have been used. Because of its lightness, aluminum became a furniture material.

      Metal, however, is still employed primarily for locks, mounts, and hinges used on furniture or for purely ornamental purposes. In the Middle Ages, simply constructed chests (chest) demanded extensive use of iron bands to provide extra strength, and the ends of these bands were cut to form decorative shapes. Cabinets (cabinet) of the Renaissance and Baroque (Baroque period) periods were decorated with mounts of pewter or bronze. Inlaid objects, decorated with material such as wood or ivory, set into the surface of the veneer furniture made at royal furniture workshops in France, especially so-called boulle furniture, were marked by an elaborate style of marquetry (patterns formed by the insertion of pieces of wood, shell, ivory, or metal into a wood veneer); they were influenced by Asian traditions, in which blue-tempered steel, brass, and copper were customarily used.

      In the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in England and the American colonies, a refined style for furniture mounts, keyhole escutcheons (an ornamental shield around a keyhole), hinges, and the like, all based largely on Chinese models, was developed. The design of these mounts was dictated by a clear functional purpose, in contrast to contemporary French Rococo mounts, the majority of which were ornamental, often at the expense of utility. French bronze founders displayed great skill in making purely decorative mounts for the bodies of chests of drawers and protective mounts for corners and legs.

Other materials
      Among other secondary materials in furniture making, glass has been used in the form of mirrorglass or as a purely decorative, illusionistic element in cabinets and writing desks. Italian craftsmen have made glass furniture; that is, wooden furniture covered with silvered glass in various colours. Ivory and other forms of bone were used as inlay material in Egyptian furniture. During the 17th and 18th centuries, ivory was widely used for inlay work in cupboard doors and table tops and expensive continental furniture.

       tortoiseshell was also used, as a costly inlay on a silvered ground, in furniture made during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Mother-of-pearl has been used, particularly as inlay material and for keyhole escutcheons. marble and, to a certain extent, plaster of paris have been used, especially in the 18th century, for the tops of chests of drawers and console tables, and in the 19th century for the tops of washstands and dressing tables.

      In Victorian England, papier-mâché (a molding material made of paper pulped with glue and other additives) was used to make such items of furniture as fire screens, small tables and chairs, and clock cases. Finally, since World War II, various plastic materials have been used quite extensively in the construction of chairs with seats and backs molded in one piece and provided with a metal base.

Stylistic and decorative processes and techniques
Constructional style and stylization
      In general, furniture can be designed in two styles, one of which is constructional in that the appearance of the piece reflects the way it is put together, and the other of which is stylized in that the appearance of the piece conceals the way it is put together, the principle being to make the joints flush with adjoining members so as to give the impression that the object is made in one piece.

      Examples of furniture made in a purely constructive style are forms employing wickerwork or bamboo, in which even the greatest display of imaginativeness in design and pattern serves to make the construction stronger and more resilient.

      Constructional details and joints (joint) are not normally visible and are, therefore, seldom of aesthetic importance to the external appearance, but joints can be emphasized artistically. The Greek form of chair known as the klismos demonstrates its joints boldly in the form of solid junctions holding the legs, seat, and stiles together. The curvature of the legs and of the backrest suggests elasticity. Extremely delicate joinery with invisible joints can be deliberately indicated by means of inlay work, examples of which can be seen in ancient Egyptian furniture.

      Stick-back and tubular steel chairs are also examples of constructional styles. The stick-back chair consists of a solid seat into which the legs, back staves, and possibly the armrests are directly mortised (joined by a tenon or projecting part of one piece of wood and mortise or groove in the other piece). Furniture of bent steel tubing, particularly tables, chairs, and stools, was manufactured in Germany in the 1920s. In this fashion a new constructional style arose, for the steel tube, which makes smaller dimensions possible, was so strong that it opened up the possibility of completely new designs. Bent steel tubes form a resilient structure.

      In contrast to the constructional style is stylization, in which there is no internal conformity between the motifs and the strength of the joints. There have been any number of examples of stylization throughout the history of furniture. In both Egyptian and Chinese furniture the joints might be deliberately concealed by painting or lacquer. Chinese furniture can also appear stylized in the sense that it gives an impression of having been put together in a more constructive manner than is actually the case. (In other words, stylization attempts to make joints flush with adjoining members so as to give the impression of an uninterrupted, harmonious, or sensitive contour. When two pieces of wood are joined together with a modern, strong glue, the resulting joint will be so rigid that, in the event of a severe shock to the piece, the wood itself will be more likely to break than will the actual joint.)

      A good example of stylization is to be found in French furniture made around the middle of the 18th century. In French Rococo commodes (commode), only the back is straight. The serpentine front and sides meet in sharp corners, at which the joints are covered by brass mounts. The number and position of the drawers is concealed by an overall pattern of veneer and bronze ornament that disregards the edges of the drawers. (In a number of cases the bronze mounts on the front consist of fanciful handles and keyhole escutcheons but are never emphasized the way they are in corresponding English commodes, even in the case of false drawer fronts or drawers provided with molding to protect the veneer.) The fully developed French Rococo armchair has no visible joints. The back, arms, and frame form a continuous whole; the difference between supported and supporting members is concealed. There are no stretchers (horizontal rods) between the legs to strengthen the construction, which is solid enough by reason of the thick dimensions of the members that meet in the seat frame. To counteract the impression of heaviness in these essentially thick dimensions, the wood is molded to give a sensation of lightness without in any way weakening the construction. A chair of this type when painted or gilded looks as if it had been made in one piece.

Decorative processes and techniques
      Whether constructional principles are exploited as a motif or elegance of overall shape is stressed through stylization, every piece of furniture can be embellished in one way or another. A piece of furniture may be embellished by effects produced in the structural wood itself or in another kind of wood added to the first; that is, by carving and turning or by inlay work. Alternatively, the piece can be decorated by the addition of materials other than wood, such as bronze, ivory, or marble. Finally, in the case of furniture meant for sitting or lying on, there is the possibility of textile enrichment in such forms as upholstery, loose covers, and cushions.

      There are examples of furniture carving in Egypt at the time of the pyramids: animal legs of cedarwood on biers, beds, and chairs; and ducks' heads terminating the legs of folding stools. Elegant carved headrests took the place of pillows in this hot climate.

      Whereas carving does not appear to have played a significant part in Greek and Roman furniture, it was a dominant feature of European furniture of the Middle Ages. The fronts of chests bear Gothic perpendicular tracery (decorative interlacing of lines) in imitation of the decorative stonework found in ecclesiastical architecture.

      Another source of inspiration for carved ornaments in bourgeois furniture was the ecclesiastical wood carving found in choir stalls and altarpieces. The art of the wood-carver also flourished in Islam (Islamic arts) during the Middle Ages, especially in kiosks (kiosk) (open pavilions), oriel (large bay windows projecting from the wall and supported by brackets) windows, and Qurʾān lecterns (lectern). The most original and remarkable form of medieval carved ornamentation was the linenfold, which resembled folded sheets of linen laid on the surface of the wood. Although the motif was widely known, its origins are obscure.

      During the Renaissance, wood-carvers changed motifs: new ornamental riches, partly inspired by the forms of classical antiquity, began to adorn cupboards and chests. Acanthus leaf designs, strapwork (narrow bands folded, crossed, and sometimes interlaced), Moresque designs, the auricular (resembling a flowered Alpine primrose) style, bunches of fruit, and scrollwork for over a hundred years dominated the figure-carving repertoires of European cabinetmakers.

      During the 17th century the fashion for carved work at first receded but came to the fore again in the console tables (tables designed to fit against the wall), mirror frames, and high-backed chairs of Court Baroque. In striking contrast to lacquer cabinets of Japan, sumptuous, gilded carved work became popular on the stands invariably made for them when they were imported to Europe.

      In the 18th century, wood-carvers enjoyed a final splendid period of prosperity when the Rococo style of ornamentation called for the plastic effects obtainable through carving. Whole panels of woodwork, doors, mirror frames, chairs, and settees were adorned with the finest wood carving, featuring combinations of mussel-shell patterns and naturalistic vines and plant tendrils. Even in English furniture of more sober design there were ample opportunities for carved work; for example, in the many chairback variations in the Chippendale manner.

      American cabinetmakers were particularly skillful at carving block fronts (the sides curving forward and the middle receding) on the drawers of chests of drawers, and the English at making tea tables with piecrust (scalloped) tops.

Turned work
      Turning is a process by which parts of furniture, such as legs and posts, are shaped while turning on a lathe. Turned work is found on Greco-Roman furniture. It is not certain whether the technique was actually employed in Egyptian furniture, though some members look as though they might have been turned. It was particularly in the shaping of wooden chair legs that Greek joiners used the lathe; the same sharp edges and deep molding seem to be repeated in the legs of bronze furniture. It is possibly ancient turned work traditions upheld in Byzantium (Byzantine art) that are reflected in certain chairs of medieval form found, for example, in Norway; made of pinewood, the construction consists principally of turned staves (thin bars), some with appendant loose rings, some of them fluted (grooved). Similar turned chairs were made in Wales in the 16th century. In the 17th century, turned work was concentrated on pillars for cupboards and on ball feet but is also seen on chair and table legs, on which rich variations involving twisted and intertwining forms occur. Turned work in ivory also flourished in the 17th century. Except for the Windsor chair, or stick-back, however, the craft of the turner played no significant role in English high style furniture of the 18th century; it is similarly alien to French Rococo furniture.

inlay and marquetry
      Inlaid woodwork, in which decorative material such as wood or ivory is set into the surface of the veneer, has accompanied the art of furniture making for thousands of years. Ivory inlay can be seen in Egyptian furniture, particularly in small, meticulously executed toilet caskets, but it is difficult to locate in Greek and Roman furniture, today known almost exclusively from pictorial representations.

      In medieval Europe, inlay work gave way to wood carving and then experienced a rich period of development during the Renaissance in Italy. Italian intarsia (mosaic of wood) work found particular favour in panels over the backs of choir stalls and in the private studies and chapels, or oratories, of princes. An intarsia study of the Duke of Urbino, an Italian nobleman and patron of the arts, is still preserved in the palace of Urbino, and a corresponding room, originally at Gubbio, is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Together with illusionism, linear perspective (the technique of representing on a plane or curved surface the spatial relation of objects as they might appear to the eye), which had just been discovered, achieved triumphs in Italian intarsia work.

      Ivory was used on both Renaissance and Baroque cupboards, sparingly to begin with, lavishly later on. Inlay work was especially used in the many splendid German and French cabinets of the period. In The Netherlands and England an extremely rich form of marquetry (patterns formed by the insertion of pieces of wood, shell, ivory, or metal into the wood veneer) was developed, incorporating floral motifs in various kinds of exotic wood on walnut. English grandfather clocks made around 1700 often had richly inlaid cases. It was in France, however, during the Rococo period especially that inlay work reached unprecedented levels of quality. The serpentine sides and fronts of commodes were veneered with costly woods whose often relatively simple grain patterns formed an effective background for richly ornamented mounts of gilded bronze.

upholstery and covers
      Upholstery and covers are used on furniture designed for sitting or lying on. From the East, Europeans learned the use of wickerwork, which provided a ventilated and resilient background for loose cushions. The upholstered chair is a genuinely European phenomenon that achieved its most distinguished and logical form in England during the 18th century. Poor heating systems in houses, general prosperity, and a desire for comfort were the conditions that gave rise to a number of imaginatively varied types of upholstered armchairs in which the only wood visible is in the legs, with the back closing right up against the sitter and side wings affording protection from inevitable drafts.

      The upholstered chair created a new effect that depended almost entirely upon the craftsmanship of the upholsterer. The upholstered chair or sofa has remained a specialty of the Anglo-Saxon world; club life in particular contributed to its popularity and resulted in heavily stuffed forms including that of the so-called chesterfield.

      By mid-20th century, new materials such as foam rubber and various types of plastic composition had inspired independent methods that dispensed entirely with traditional upholstery techniques. Upholstery was succeeded by molded plastic forms and by sacks filled with plastic balls that are able to conform to the changing positions of the body.

Imagery and ornamentation
      Painted and plastic images, or ornamental decoration, on furniture are secondary processes compared with construction and design. Some of the best and most expressive furniture forms, such as the Greek klismos chair and the English Windsor chair, are quite independent of imagery or ornamentation. On the other hand, no period in the history of furniture is entirely devoid of these secondary processes.

      All furniture decoration is normally concentrated where it will not be in the way; for example, on the legs, arms, and backs of chairs; on the ends and canopies of beds; on the legs and stretchers of tables; and on all vertical surfaces of cupboards and chests of drawers. The superfluous nature of furniture decoration is particularly pronounced in forms that express rank or prestige. The thrones of kings and bishops, the seats of guild masters, beds of state, the writing desks of chief executives, and the like have all lent themselves to imagery and ornamentation; and as the functional aspect of the piece has declined, it has seemed that the amount of ornamentation has increased. Purely functional milk stools and typewriting tables are devoid of ornamentation. This division can be noted with varying clarity throughout the history of furniture.

      At times the ornamentation itself has, in a sense, been functional. The decoration of the earliest examples of furniture from Mesopotamia and Egypt, for example, had a symbolic or magical (magic) function. The legs of Sumerian stools are shaped like those of an ox, which was the guardian animal of the city of Ur. Egyptian furniture shows a much wider development of furniture legs based on animal models. Three-footed stools ending in dogs' paws, folding stools with legs in the shape of ducks' heads, and bed legs in the form of lions' feet are known from a thousand years of Egyptian furniture history. Tables with lions' legs can be seen on Assyrian reliefs. Similar animal symbols are known from representations of Greek furniture. Sometimes the arms as well as the legs of Greek chairs had animal shapes—terminating, for example, in the head of a lion or a ram. It is thought likely that ceremonial seats and thrones featured animal motifs partly as a magical expression of the transference of power. This ancient tradition lived on in European furniture; for example, in thrones, where griffons, lions, and eagles played a prominent part in the decoration.

      Even in the furniture of antiquity it is difficult to differentiate between the symbolic and the aesthetic in decorative features. It is clear, however, that the animal world has always been one of the primary sources of ornamental motifs in furniture. Animal legs and heads are found, for example, as terminal decorations in the French Rococo chair and imitations thereof. The animal leg played a prominent part in English furniture of the 18th century and later passed into American furniture. English cabinetmakers and chair makers devised a naturalistically carved lion's foot and a characteristic claw-and-ball foot, a motif that may stem from Chinese forms of ornamentation (not, however, on furniture) such as the dragon's claw holding a ball or a pearl. Richly carved English mahogany chairs sometimes also feature the heads of birds, lions, or dogs as terminal decorations on the arms. Although the majority of Chinese chairs and tables are supported by straight legs of rounded wood, Chinese thrones and seats for dignitaries have curved legs that, for some unknown reason, may be imitations of elephant trunks.

      Next to the animal world—and of more recent origin—architecture is the most important source of decorative motifs in furniture. In the late Middle Ages, the perpendicular tracery of Gothic architecture was transferred through the craft of the wood-carver to the fronts of chests. Italian chests and walnut cupboards of the same period were modelled on the marble sarcophagi of classical antiquity, which are entirely architectonic in form. During the Renaissance and Baroque periods the column was introduced as a strikingly decorative frontal feature in the form of table legs and on cupboards. The fronts of very big, heavy cupboards particularly lent themselves to architectonic composition corresponding to the portals and gables of houses. At about the same time, the ornamental wealth of the Renaissance broke through in rosettes, cupids, and fruits on panelling and frames.

      During the Court Baroque period under Louis XIV (Louis XIV style) in France, the royal official style left its mark not only on ornate pieces of furniture but also on panels, doors, mirror frames, and, indeed, even on the facades of palaces and châteaus and the layout of formal gardens. The coherence between interior and furniture was even more pronounced during the Rococo period and under Louis XVI, culminating temporarily in the furniture and rooms of the French Empire style.

      The 19th century often seems to have offered nothing more than a breathless repetition of this coherence between the ornamental design of furniture and the architecture of the interior—both revivals of the styles of the past. A new style did not arise until the close of the century. French Art Nouveau furniture, with its gliding vegetable forms, must be seen in conjunction with the houses and rooms for which it was executed. The furniture of Antonio Gaudí (Gaudí, Antoni), a Spanish architect and designer, for example, had a profound coherence with his own buildings; and the strangely expressive and stylized furniture of a Scottish architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (Mackintosh, Charles Rennie), forms an integral part of his buildings and interiors in Glasgow.

      The influence of architecture on furniture can also manifest itself in a lack of ornament. There is a relationship, for example, between functionalistic architecture as it was first manifested in the 1920s at the Bauhaus in Germany and steel furniture designed by the German architect Mies van der Rohe.

Kinds of furniture
      Of all furniture forms, the chair may be the most important. While most other forms (except the bed) are intended to support objects, the chair supports the human form. The term chair is used here in the widest sense, from stool to throne to derivative forms such as the bench and sofa, which may be regarded as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not clearly defined.

      The social history of the chair is as interesting as its history as an art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and an aesthetic object; it is also an indicator of social rank. At the old royal courts there were social distinctions between sitting on a chair with arms, on a chair with a back but no arms, and having to make do with a stool. In the 20th century, the director's or manager's chair has been an indicator of superior dignity, and even in democratic parliaments the speaker sits on a raised level.

      As a furniture form, the chair encompasses a wealth of variations. There are chairs designed to match man's age and physical condition (the high chair, the wheelchair) and for his position in society (the executive chair, the throne). In the olden days there were chairs to be born in (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs to die in (the electric chair). There are chairs with one, two, three, and four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. There are chairs that can be folded up, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.

      Modern living has developed special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. All of these chair forms have been evolved to conform to changing human needs. Because of its close association with man, the chair appears to its full advantage only when in use. Whereas it makes no difference to one's appreciation of a cupboard or a chest of drawers whether there is anything inside or not, a chair is best seen and evaluated with a person sitting on it, for chair and sitter complement one another. Thus the various parts of a chair have been given names corresponding to the parts of the human body: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.

      Because the basic function of the chair is to support the body, its value is judged primarily on how well it fulfills this practical role. In the construction of a chair, the designer is bound by certain static laws and principal measurements. Within these limits, however, the chair maker has great freedom.

      The history of the chair covers a period of several thousand years. There are civilizations that have created distinctive chair forms, expressive of the highest endeavour in the spheres of technique and aesthetics. Among such cultures, special mention must be made of ancient Egypt and Greece; China; Spain and The Netherlands in the 17th century; England in the 18th century; and France in the 18th century during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI.

      Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the result of careful design, are known from discoveries made in tombs. One of these is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The classical Egyptian chair has four legs shaped like those of an animal, a curved seat, and a sloping back supported by vertical stretchers. In this way a strong triangular construction was obtained. There was apparently no marked difference between the construction of Egyptian thrones and chairs for ordinary citizens. The main difference lies in the decorative ornamentation, in the choice of costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was developed as an easily portable seat for officers. As a camp stool the form persisted until much later times. But the stool also took on the character of a ceremonial seat, its mechanical function as a folding stool being forgotten. This can already be observed, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, executed in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They are in the form of folding stools but cannot be folded as the seats are of wood. The simple construction of the folding stool, consisting of two frames that turn on metal bolts and support a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, reappears somewhat later in the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The best known of these is the folding stool, made of ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).

Greece and Rome (ancient Rome)
      The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient specimen still extant but from a wealth of pictorial material. The best known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410 BC). It is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of which are shown. These unusual legs were presumably executed in bent wood and were therefore subjected to great pressure from the weight of the sitter. The joints fastening the legs to the frame of the seat are therefore very strong and clearly indicated.

      The Romans adopted the Greek chair; a number of statues of seated Romans show examples of a heavier and apparently somewhat more crudely constructed klismos. Both types, the light and the heavy, were revived during the Classicist period. The klismos chair is found in French Empire (Empire style) furniture, in English Regency (Regency style), and in special forms of considerable originality in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.

      The ancestry of the chair in China cannot be traced as far back as in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unbroken series of drawings and paintings has been preserved showing the interiors and exteriors of Chinese houses and their furniture. Also preserved since the 16th century are a number of chairs of wood or lacquered wood that bear an astonishing resemblance to representations of older chairs.

      As was the case in Egypt, there were two major chair forms in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair is found both with and without arms but always with a square seat and straight stiles (upright side supports) to support the back. In one form, however, the stiles are slightly curved above the arms so as to conform to the angle of the S-shaped back splat (the central upright of a chairback). All three parts are mortised into the yoke-like top rail. While the design of the back splat exercised an influence on English chairs of the Queen Anne (Queen Anne style) period, wooden members that only to a limited extent reinforce corner joints (and are loose into the bargain) represent a feature exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which closes about the rounded staves. All members are round in section or have rounded edges—references perhaps to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and may have a plaited bottom. These chairs required the sitter to remain stiff and upright; for if too much pressure is exerted on the back, the chair has a tendency to topple over. In patriarchal Chinese homes of this period armchairs presumably were reserved for the senior members of the family, for they were held in great esteem.

      The Chinese folding stool is presumed to have travelled to China from the West. It does not differ so very much from the Egyptian or Scandinavian folding stools, but it has a variation in that the top rail is elegantly joined to the two legs of the stool by means of a curved member, which is often provided with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of both these furniture forms is stylized. The constructive and decorative elements are combined in a manner that is simultaneously naïve and refined. The pieced-together appearance is a result of the fact that the individual members do not appear to have been joined together with either glue or screws, but have been mortised into one another and locked into position in the manner of a Chinese puzzle.

Spain: 17th century
      The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also left its mark on the chair. Paintings show a type of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, consisting of two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing in between, stitched to produce a pattern of small pads. The front board and a corresponding board at the back could be folded after loosening some small iron hooks. Thus the chair was an easily portable piece of furniture for travelling which, at the same time, had the dignity of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.

The Netherlands (Netherlands, The): 17th century
      A low, square, upholstered type of chair can be seen in engravings of interiors of affluent Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse (Bosse, Abraham), a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this kind of chair is also found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won favour, it is not certain that the form actually originated in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair are smooth, round in section, and of slender dimensions; they are sometimes baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is clearly a bourgeois piece of furniture and was made in considerable numbers, as can be seen from one of Abraham Bosse's engravings, in which a whole row of such chairs has been lined up against a wall. The form asserts itself by virtue of its harmonious proportions and fine upholstery in gilt leather or fabric bordered with fringes.

France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
      The French Rococo (Rococo style) chair in its most mature form—that is, as developed in Paris around 1750—spread over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied into the mid-20th century. The model owes its popularity to a combination of comfort and elegance. The seat conforms to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Normally the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads on the armrests. Smooth transitions achieved between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are solidly constructed on craftsmanlike principles despite the absence of stretchers between the legs.

      French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof employ wood of fairly thick dimensions; but all members are deeply molded, all superfluous wood has been cut away, and finer examples may be further embellished with very delicate and decorative carving. The wood may be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry is used for the upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; canework is sometimes used in place of upholstery.

      English chairs of the 18th century are more varied in design than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the most distinguished circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and won favour in several parts of the Continent, had no parallel in England. Prior to 1740, the most commonly used wood was walnut; thereafter, and for the rest of the century, it was mahogany. Walnut, though beautiful in hue, was soft and therefore less suited to wood carving than to rounded, curving forms. Outer surfaces, such as the back and seat frame, were usually veneered. During the walnut period, highly overstuffed armchairs, covered with leather or embroidered material, were also developed. The best upholstery of this period is precisely and firmly modelled and accentuated by braiding or tacks. When imports of mahogany became common, no specifically new chair designs appeared, but the character of the woodwork changed. Mahogany, having a firmer, closer grain, could be cut thinner, which meant that individual parts of the chair could be more slender in shape. Mahogany also lent itself better to carving than walnut. Carving was concentrated more on the arms and back than on the legs, which as a rule were straight and smooth with chamfered (bevelled) edges and molding. There was a wealth of variety in chairback designs, featuring elegant, pierced, vase-shaped splats or two upright posts connected by horizontal slats (ladderback).

      Alongside the French Rococo chair and the best English chairs in walnut and mahogany, the stick-back chair was relatively unaffected by the stylistic changes of the day. Originally a medieval form, known, for example, from paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and still found in mid-20th century in the churches and inns of southern Europe, the stick-back chair (in all of its variations) consists basically of a solid, saddle-shaped seat into which the legs, back staves, and possibly the armrests are directly mortised. This typically peasant form underwent a renewal and a process of refinement in England and America during the 18th century. Under the name Windsor chair (a term that seems to have been used for the first time in 1731) or Philadelphia chair, it became well-known and was widely distributed throughout the world.

Late 18th to 20th century
      During the Neoclassical period, no basic changes took place in chair forms, but legs became straight and dimensions lighter. Backs in the shape of classical vases replaced the fanciful outlines of the Rococo period. Around 1800, freely executed imitations of Greek and Roman chairs of the klismos type, with curved legs and backrest, appeared. French chairs of the Empire period, executed in dark mahogany and embellished with ornate bronze mounts, created a ponderous effect.

      In cheaper versions of inferior workmanship, bourgeois chairs of the 19th century carried on the traditions of the 17th and 18th centuries. The only real innovations were the bentwood (bentwood furniture) (wood that has been bent and shaped) chairs in beech that became popular all over the world and were still made in the 20th century. Around 1900 the continental Art Nouveau and Jugendstil styles (French and German styles characterized by organic foliate forms, sinuous lines, and non-geometric forms), and the Arts and Crafts Movement in England (established by the English poet and decorator William Morris to reintroduce idealized standards of medieval craftsmanship), gave rise to original chair designs by Eugène Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde (Velde, Henry van de) in Belgium, Josef Hoffman (Hoffmann, Josef) in Austria, Antonio Gaudí (Gaudí, Antoni) in Spain, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh (Mackintosh, Charles Rennie) in Scotland. These new furniture styles did not exercise wide, let alone decisive, influence. The Art Nouveau chairs designed by the French architect Hector Guimard (Guimard, Hector), for example, are collector's pieces, but his name is known to a broader public only because of his fanciful entrances to the Paris Métro.

      After World War I, the Bauhaus school in Germany became a creative centre for revolutionary thinking, resulting, for example, in tubular steel chairs designed by the architects Marcel Breuer (Breuer, Marcel), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig), and others. During World War II, the aircraft industry accelerated the development of laminated wood and molded plastic furniture. The dominant chair forms of this period go back to designs by Alvar Aalto (Aalto, Alvar), Bruno Mathsson, and Charles and Ray Eames. Rapid technical developments, in conjunction with an ever-increasing interest in human-factors engineering, or ergonomics, suggest that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.

Fixed and mechanical tables
      In general, tables can be divided into fixed and mechanical types. The fixed table, consisting of a square or round top supported by one or more legs, is the least complicated from the viewpoint of craftsmanship. It is a form that requires wood of thick dimensions in order to make the joints by which the top is fastened to the legs strong enough to resist lateral pressure. Old Spanish or Italian tables are often constructed with sloping stretchers to counteract this pressure. The simplest way to make a table steady without exaggerating the dimensions of the individual parts is to fasten the legs to an underframe. Fixed tabletops can also make do with a single leg; for example, the so-called pedestal table, terminating in a tripod or quadripod. Pedestal tables topple over easily, however, unless both top and pedestal are particularly heavy. Three-legged tables with a fixed top provide a more reliable support than a single-legged type but are unstable when subjected to uneven pressure from above.

      The term mechanical refers to all tables whose tops can be enlarged or reduced according to need. Such tables may require pivotable or collapsible legs to augment the strength of the top. A familiar solution to the extension of a tabletop is the so-called Dutch system, known since the 17th century from Dutch engravings and paintings, in which the extension leaves, when pulled, slide out on sloping runners. When the leaves have been fully extended, the top is lifted and then dropped into place. The table height remains the same. The construction demands great accuracy and skill on the part of the craftsman. There are also more complicated forms of extension tables with runners enabling the legs as well as the leaves to be drawn out; extra leaves can then be inserted.

      Tables with flaps also are constructed to take up less space when folded away and can be variously made, either with flaps that are supported by brackets that swing out on hinges or on so-called gate legs. During the 18th century, England was a leader in the design of ingenious folding tables, especially card tables. In the gateleg card table, the top can be folded so as to occupy half the space, and when opened is supported by a leg that swings out like a gate. In another system, the square underframe can be extended to form a rectangular top, the two sides being divided by hinges. On modern card tables, all four legs can be folded up within the frame surrounding the top; when not in use, the tables can therefore be stored easily.

Historical forms and styles
      Round stone tables on low pedestal legs are known in Egypt (art and architecture, Egyptian) from the time of the pyramids (c. 2700 BC). Egyptian limestone reliefs also show tables of normal height. Dating from the later dynasties, crude wooden tables with architectonic molding have been preserved. No tables have survived from ancient Greece. From the Roman ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, however, there are examples of monumental table supports or side members made of marble decorated with relief work and metal tables, many of them of the folding type. All wooden furniture has been lost, however.

      Several wooden-topped communion tables dating from the early Middle Ages still stand in churches, hidden by altar cloths or built into boxes. Usually, such tables rest either on solid masonry or on a stone socle (a projecting member beneath the base of a superstructure), but they are sometimes elegantly supported by several columns. Generally, communion tables are made of stone, and since one stands before them, they are higher than the usual table. Examples of wooden tables preserved from the late Middle Ages are, as a rule, long narrow tops fastened to side members.

      Tables of the Renaissance and Baroque (Baroque period) periods are notable for their constructive and aesthetic design. Their thick and heavy tops rest on an underframe; the legs are baluster-shaped or turned, with deeply carved bulbous decoration. In the 17th century and later, table forms were widely differentiated and made for a great variety of purposes; i.e., dining tables, library tables, drawing-room tables, card tables, tea tables, small candlestick tables, sideboards, and console tables.

      From the Ming dynasty and the 18th century, several interesting Chinese fixed-top table forms have been preserved, in which the constructive elements are in some cases emphasized and in others deliberately disguised. Like other Chinese furniture forms, the tables create a stylized effect, with a naïve, calculated character. Chinese tables may be completely covered with lacquer and gilt ornamentation, but sometimes the wood is left in its natural colour.

      In Homer's Odyssey there is a description of how Odysseus made his own bed: the trunk of an olive tree was cut to the exact shape and planed smooth; after holes had been drilled in the framework, oxhide thongs, dyed crimson, were threaded back and forth to make a pliant web; finally, the wood was embellished with inlay work in gold, silver, and ivory.

      As a furniture form, the bed is as old as the chair. In principle the construction of the bed is extraordinarily simple: it consists merely of a rectangular platform raised in some way or other slightly above floor level. A considerable number of bed forms cannot be classed as furniture at all. Alcoves and bunks in ships, railway carriages, and airplanes belong more to the sphere of building trade joinery than to cabinetmaking.

      That a number of beautiful and original bed forms of fine artistic execution have been created since antiquity is attributable to the fact that the bed gives the furniture designer rich possibilities in terms of framing and presentation, particularly in conjunction with textiles. Apart from the actual bedclothes, which historically are of greater importance than the actual platform and the surrounding framework, imaginative experiments combining the practical and the impressive—in four-poster beds and tentlike canopies, for example—have been made for centuries.

      An Egyptian (art and architecture, Egyptian) bier dating from the 1st dynasty (c. 3100–2890 BC) shows the original form of the bed: a rectangular framework of staves, round in section and mortised into one another so as to leave the ends free lengthwise, supported on four small legs carved to represent stylized lions' feet. These paws face in the same direction—as if they were walking with the dead person. This is characteristic of all Egyptian beds. Made of cedarwood (cedar), the light framework is higher at the head than at the foot; and whereas the foot is always terminated by a footboard, there is no board at the head. The beds were so constructed because the Egyptians when sleeping or resting used a stool-like support for the head. Essential to the Egyptian bed, countless examples of this piece of equipment—made usually of wood but sometimes of ivory and faience—have been found in Egyptian tombs. The actual framework of the bed was often covered with plaited leather thongs.

      In China, a bed in the form of a complete little house, with an anteroom in the form of a veranda, was placed in the middle of the room.

      Before central heating and a knowledge of hygiene became common, the closed bed was the generally accepted form in cold climates. The simplest way to avoid drafts was to place the bed in an alcove—as was the practice in farmhouses right up to the 19th century and most notably at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's masterpiece. The most frequently encountered form of bed in European civilization, however, was the four-poster. Throughout the Middle Ages and later, the four-poster was developed in a variety of forms. Already during the Middle Ages, beds were designed for clearly ceremonial effect. The four posts supported an expanse of cloth that extended from the head like a canopy, just as the most distinguished row of choir stalls in a church was crowned by a baldachin (an ornamental structure resembling a canopy). Miniatures in illuminated manuscripts of the same period show tentlike beds entirely closed by drapery and curtains.

 In the time of the absolute monarchies in the 17th and 18th centuries, pompous four-posters were developed in which the surrounding textile drapery completely concealed the wooden construction of the bed, thereby achieving a synthesis of practical and ceremonial considerations. Every palace or mansion had a chamber of state among its official reception rooms. Contemporary memoirs describe the complicated ceremony that took place at Louis XIV's daily awakening. Where his royal highness spent the night was his own concern, but his awakening was an act of state, in the conduct of which princes of the blood, dukes, and distinguished courtiers all had their respective duties: one would draw aside the bed-curtain, another would have the royal dressing gown ready, another the royal slippers. It was the first audience of the day, the king's levee. A large number of 17th- and 18th-century four-poster beds are still preserved in palaces, country houses, and museums; and most of them have a clearly dramatic, almost theatrical effect. The four-poster beds of the Baroque and Rococo periods, moreover, reflect great artistic refinement, especially in the rare instances in which they can still be seen in their original interiors complete with their entire textile adornment. Such beds of state are typical of continental Europe. In England and America, particularly toward the end of the 18th century, greater interest was taken in showing off the bedposts and the upper framework connecting them. Many English four-posters have slender, finely carved mahogany posts, whereas on the Continent the corresponding parts may be entirely covered with the same silken material as that used for the curtains, canopy, and bedspread.

      During the Empire period in France an entirely new form of bed was developed and won favour throughout most of Europe. The design was inspired by the Roman couch as known from reliefs and from excavations in Pompeii and Herculaneum. The frame was very high, and the bed ends consisted of volutes (spiral or scroll-shaped forms) of equal height. The bed was crowned by a tentlike superstructure, and the martial aspect was further emphasized by the use of spears to support the draperies and curtains; the whole bedroom, in fact, might well be draped like a tent. In these surroundings, the army commanders of Napoleon's time could feel like the caesars and consuls of ancient Rome. During a campaign, however, collapsible iron camp beds were more practical. Napoleon owned several and died in one on St. Helena in 1821. As a furniture form, the iron bed was a neutral framework built to support bedclothes and equipped with stanchions (upright supports) for curtains; it was light, transportable, and spartan.

      Among plantation owners in the West Indies and the southern United States, a type of four-poster popular at the beginning of the 19th century was dominated by wood, rather than textile hangings. The posts supported very light, roughly made wooden frames, to which thin, white mosquito netting was fastened to protect the sleeper. The monumental and dignified effect was obtained by the quality of the woodwork. Of thick dimensions, the wood is solid mahogany polished to a high gloss. The four bedposts are not necessarily identical at the head and foot of the bed, but all have bulbous and turned sections, exaggerated almost to the point of crudeness. The headboards and footboards are imaginatively designed with voluted gables (triangular decoration) and galleries (ornamental railings) supported on pillars. Besides the practical function of these West Indian beds, they also served to indicate the importance of their owner; like the royal four-poster of the days of absolute monarchy, they clearly showed the difference between master and slave.

      By the 20th century, the bed belonged exclusively to one's private life; and compared with those of the past, modern beds were simple. Four-posters are still “modern,” possibly because they appeal to something primitive, namely the sensation of sleeping in a tent. In general, development has been concentrated on improving the quality of bedclothes and increasing the amount of comfort by attention to box springs, mattresses, eiderdowns, and pillows. The actual woodwork of the bed is usually restricted to joined veneered sections of laminated board, canework sometimes being used for the headboards and footboards.

Storage furniture

      The principal constructional features of early medieval (Middle Ages) chests lasted until the Renaissance. The so-called Oseberg ship, dating from the Viking era (9th century AD) and discovered in 1904 in Vestfold, Norway, included among the furniture on board a chest made of oak planks secured by iron bands. The planks are not mortised together, and the end sections stand vertical, thereby forming feet, wider at the bottom than above. The lid is formed by a single curved oak plank that has been roughhewn into shape. The bottom of the chest rests in a groove cut into the end sections. The wooden construction, a primitive form of carpentry, is held together by broad iron bands, the nails are tin-plated. In this Oseberg chest, the iron mounts essential to the construction constitute the decorative element as well. Medieval chests are developments of the same principle: a piece of carpentry with decorative iron mounts, but the principle found freer application in medieval church doors than in the chests of the period.

      The chest often appears in portable form as a traveller's trunk that can also serve as a stationary piece of furniture. A number of painted, parchment-covered Florentine (Florence) chests dating from the middle of the 15th century have been preserved. These were used as trunks by young girls on their way to enter a convent and later stood in their cells as pieces of storage furniture for clothes and other personal belongings. A “nun's chest” of this type is in principle quite different from the sumptuous cassoni (cassone) of the Italian Renaissance that were adorned with gilded (gilding) stucco work and painted panels. Cassoni were stationary pieces of palace furniture. Specifically designed for travelling, however, were Javanese (Java) camphorwood chests that made the long voyage round the Cape of Good Hope full of stuffs and spices and eventually came to rest in an English manor house or in a gabled Dutch mansion in Amsterdam. The plank construction with metal mounts is of primitive craftsmanship. The large, smooth expanses of reddish-brown wood, with their elaborate openwork brass mounts and big, chased bolt heads to take the brunt of rough handling, have a kind of sophisticated crudeness about them. On later camphorwood chests the brass mounts are sunk flush with the surface of the wood, just as on portable writing desks and toilet cases of the French Empire period. Veneered wood was not suitable for chests intended for travel purposes, but it was possible to cover the entire chest with leather fastened with metal nails, often forming a pattern. Several beautiful, leather-covered chests made in Italy and Spain in the 17th century are known, and the form persisted in the large wardrobe trunks of succeeding centuries.

      When furniture-making techniques demanding the skill of the cabinetmaker evolved during the Renaissance, frames, panels, and carving appeared on chests. In southern Europe, walnut lent itself admirably to carving; in northern Europe, oak. While the Italians were inspired by the molding and decorative plant ornamentation of the stone sarcophagi of ancient Rome, in northern Europe late medieval wood carving traditions were continued. As a rule the carved woodwork was picked out (decorated) with paint and gilded. In the 18th century, the chest was largely supplanted for storage purposes by the chest of drawers and the commode (low chest of drawers), but it never entirely disappeared. Particularly in the big country houses of England and America, chests of mahogany or walnut were used for a long time, often having drawers and finely fashioned brass mounts that revealed Chinese influence.

      Strictly speaking, the cupboard is a derivative form of the chest. Early Renaissance cupboards resembled two chests placed one on top of the other, but they were opened from the front by means of doors. The design and construction of the cupboard's pronounced front have always provided ample scope for artistic composition, and it is no mere coincidence that the cupboard more than any other furniture form should have closer links with architecture. It literally invited an architectonic composition: socle, columns, cornice. This development can be traced from the close of the Middle Ages in a large number of southern German and Tirolean cupboards bearing late Gothic perpendicular tracery and smooth surfaces veneered with ashwood. Very large cupboards took on their most striking form, however, during the Renaissance in 17th-century The Netherlands and northern Germany. In molding and composition, they have much in common with architectural facades, but their picturesque and textural effects are the result of refined craftsmanship. The use of veneer was common on Continental cupboards. A carcass of wood was given a veneer of fine walnut; socle, frames, columns, and cornice were decorated with veneered black ebony. The doors were furnished with strong locks, and the keyhole was concealed behind a sliding middle column. The cornice was often decoratively crowned with a set of Dutch faience or Chinese porcelain vases. These heavy cupboards were made to appear lighter by placing them on big, turned ball feet. In marked contrast to the European Baroque cupboards, Chinese cupboards of the same period were simple, smooth-surfaced, and boxlike. Their construction was based on a simple system of uprights and frames, and as a rule they were made in pairs. If painted, a large decorative painting was spread across the entire surface, including the doors. Inside, Chinese cupboards are finished with great care and painted in a different colour from the outside. The mounts are of various white and yellow metal alloys, smooth, either round or square; and the locks are secured with prismatically designed padlocks. Japanese and Siamese cupboards, apart from certain independent features, follow the old Chinese traditions.

      The clothes cupboard of the 19th and 20th centuries, an indispensable piece of bedroom furniture wherever there were no built-in cupboards, was based on traditional features of the 18th-century English clothespress but equipped to meet the changing fashions of modern times.

Bookcases (bookcase)
      Bookcases or bookshelves are a less interesting form of storage furniture from the viewpoint of furniture history. Perhaps the most significant innovation appeared in 18th-century England in the bookcase with adjustable shelves and a closed-off lower section for folio files. The shelves were protected by glass doors consisting of an ingenious trelliswork of carved wood. Bookcases and shelves become interesting only when they form part of specially designed library interiors and when several shelves full of books create an intimate, compact whole.

Mixed forms
      Apart from the kinds of storage furniture already mentioned, there are numerous combination forms. An ordinary table can be used as a writing desk, and the only differences between the typical French Rococo writing desk of the 18th century and other tables are the drawers in the underframe and the leather-covered top. The novelty of Louis XV (Louis XV style)'s writing desk consists of a rolltop device for closing the writing flap. In England a special type of writing desk was developed which, besides drawers in the underframe, has a side cupboard fitted with additional drawers and, occasionally, sliding trays. Some have a false drawer front that can be pulled out to form a writing surface. When a writing desk has a cupboard built on the top of it and is placed on a chest of drawers, the result is a cabinet or secretary. There are also bookcases with lower sections equipped with a flap, either hinged or sliding, for writing. All of these combinations, frequently of ingenious design, were made anonymously in England during the 18th century, apparently having arisen from a desire on the part of the well-to-do middle classes to develop a sophisticated and differentiated pattern of life.

      A special group of storage furniture embraces the various forms of corner furniture, low or high cupboards that were made in pairs (just as in the case of several other old furniture forms) particularly for small rooms, in which they became fixed components of the interior scheme.

Kitchen furniture and furnishings
      Kitchen furniture and furnishings go back to antiquity. In the Middle Ages, the kitchen, with its fireplace, was the most centrally placed room in the home. Later, closed fireplaces were constructed in the form of stoves; and cupboards, sinks, and plate racks were fixed to the wall. The kitchen in a modern home, if not combined with a dining area, is a small room filled with equipment. On the other hand, institutional kitchens have expanded enormously. Outdoor cooking equipment, such as various forms of open-air grills, also forms part of modern kitchen furniture.

Bathroom furniture and fixtures
      Bathrooms in large private homes were not unknown in the 18th century, and splendidly equipped marble bathrooms are still preserved in several European palaces and mansions. But not until the 19th century did bathrooms in private homes become more commonplace. Fixtures generally include a toilet, bidet (in some countries), washbasin, bathtub or shower, mirror, and shelves or cabinets. In the 20th century the equipping of bathrooms became a separate industry with a wide variety of special forms of bathroom furniture and fixtures. The materials used are porcelain, enamel, plastic, wood, and stainless steel.

Specialized furniture
      Office furniture in the widest sense of the term has undergone rapid developments since the mid-19th century. Such pieces as high desks used by clerks and large rolltop desks were replaced by carefully designed standard workstations with side cupboards, typewriter tables, filing cabinets, and office chairs with adjustable backs and swivel seats. In the late 20th century, office furniture was further revolutionized by the rise of the personal computer. From office furniture one passes naturally to the vast sphere of institutional furniture: theatre furnishings in the form of rows of connected seats, restaurant furniture, furniture for conference rooms, laboratories, workshops, and factories. Several of these specialized furnishings reflect past traditions. The way in which the British House of Commons (Commons, House of) is furnished, for example, derives without doubt from the pattern in which choir stalls were grouped in medieval churches; whereas the semicircular, often amphitheatrically designed assembly halls of the United States Congress (Congress of the United States) and the parliaments of many European countries are developed forms of academies of surgery or other university auditoriums. Similarly, museums, libraries, and archives have their special furniture in the form of showcases, desks, special tables, and socles.

Kinds of accessory furnishings
      Accessory furnishings constitute important elements in the interior. Included here are clocks (clock) and other mechanical works, mirrors, textiles, screens, stoves, and fireplaces; and a number of smaller articles made by cabinetmakers, such as boxes, caskets, sewing tables, wastepaper baskets, lighting fixtures, frames, panelling, and floor surfaces.

Clocks
      Clocks are considered furnishings if the movement is enclosed within a case, which need not necessarily be of wood. Clocks can be divided into table clocks and tall-case clocks. There were two creative centres for table clocks, namely England and France. In 17th- and 18th-century France, the table clock became an object of monumental design, the best examples of which are minor works of sculpture. The actual movement is framed by a marble socle, and the clockface by a sculptural frame of solid bronze incorporating freely molded figures and ornamentation. Some of France's best sculptors and bronze casters were engaged in the creation of decorative frames for clock movements. A French speciality, imitated elsewhere on the Continent, was the wall clock, or so-called cartel clock, the earliest examples of which were designed by a goldsmith and ornamentalist, Juste-Aurèle Meissonier (Meissonier, Juste-Aurèle). The clockface is the centre of an ornament, or rocaille-cartouche, cast in bronze, sometimes garnished with figures of symbolic significance; for example, Time, a man with a scythe, or a crowing cock. In England, where tastes were more bourgeois, the fine movements made by skillful London clockmakers were built into wooden cases, architectonic in composition and featuring pilasters (partly recessed columns) and cornices. Simple walnut cases could be adorned with metal ornaments and brass balls. The more expensive table clocks were concealed in cases embellished with inlaid wood or tortoiseshell.

      Tall-case clocks (grandfather clock) were also made in France and England. French tall-case clocks are monumental and richly designed. In the reign of Louis XIV there were tall-case clocks of the boulle type with metal and tortoiseshell inlay work. Later, in the 18th century and especially during the Rococo period, the case that concealed the weights acquired more dramatic form: richly inlaid wooden surfaces were framed and adorned by magnificently gilded Rococo ornaments in bronze. The English tall-case clock was to a greater extent a piece of furniture, and the main features of its construction remained unaltered throughout the 18th century. The tall-case clock stands on a base, or socle, from which the somewhat narrower case for the weights rises up, crowned by the framework of the actual movement and clockface. The last-named section is in reality a table clock mounted on a weight case. Each individual section of the tall-case clock is thus clearly separate; each has its distinct function; and no attempt was made, as in France, to veil the independence of the individual parts. The weight case is provided with a door in which there may be a window through which the position of the weights can be observed. In the United States, urban centres spawned regionally specific styles of casework that made the tall-case clock one of the most expensive items in the 18th-century home.

      During the 18th century, barometers became increasingly popular. The mechanism was provided with a decorative wooden framework intended to harmonize with the other furniture in a room.

Mirrors (mirror)
      The use of mirror glass in furnishings arose during the 17th century. The discoloration of the melted glass because of silvering and the prohibitive cost and difficulty of manufacturing mirror glass of considerable size restricted the possibilities of large-scale application. The mirror gallery at Versailles was thus an outstanding technical achievement for its time. When Louis XIV strode through the gallery at the head of his court, the glass walls reflected the diamonds in his crown. This effect was imitated to a greater or lesser degree in all the courts of Europe. In the 18th century the wall mirror found its way into most interiors. The popularity and wide distribution of mirror glass was stimulated by the need for an increased amount of artificial light. During the 16th and 17th centuries, this need had been satisfied by placing candles in front of highly polished concave metal plates. By using silvered mirror glass, the light effect was multiplied. From then on, large mirrors hung over console tables were a necessary and functional part of rooms illumined by artificial light.

Fabrics
      The use of fabrics in furnishing rooms is closely bound up with the need for heating. In the primitively heated rooms of the Middle Ages, textiles were used to keep out cold and drafts. In 12th- and 13th-century churches, painted textile drapery can still be discerned beneath the picture friezes. In rather cold churches, just as in poorly heated homes, loosely hung textile wall coverings were of the greatest importance. They were hung loosely because of the practice of taking them down and moving them, together with the relatively few items of furniture, according to need. It was not until the end of the 17th century and during the 18th century that tapestries (tapestry) and other forms of textile wall hanging became fixtures; that is, fastened to the wall within frames. Wall pictures made of paper and, subsequently, patterned wallpaper became a cheaper substitute for textile wall hangings during the 19th century. Screens or room dividers were often covered with textiles, partly to afford protection against direct radiant heat and partly to create cozy corners in large rooms. Framed screens were often covered with pieces of tapestry, with other woven materials, or with gilt leather. (See the article tapestry.)

Fireplaces (fireplace)
      Rooms and large halls were not heated until the advent of modern central heating systems. The open hearth was replaced during the late Middle Ages by the fireplace, which is merely an architectonic way of framing the burning logs. During the period when it was important as a source of heat, the fireplace became the object of design work by significant artists. A Scottish architect, Robert Adam, and his brothers and an Italian architect and engraver, Giambattista Piranesi, made considerable artistic contributions to the design and construction of fireplaces.

Other accessory furnishings
      Small utility objects constitute an important part of the furnishing of interiors. Several of them are the work of cabinetmakers; for example, boxes for writing paper and playing cards, caskets for letters and documents, trays for serving or presentation. Accessory furnishings include the various articles, large and small, that are employed in the course of domestic work—from small looms to lace pillows, spinning wheels, embroidery frames, and sewing tables. Women's chattels, partly in the form of equipment for domestic needs and partly in the form of items of storage furniture for such small items as pins, scissors, wool, and materials, all had their place in the home.

      Finally, the structure and decoration of the walls, ceilings, and floors—for example, panelling, stucco work, parquet flooring, carpets—can also come under the heading of accessory furnishings. Usually, however, they are considered under the subject of interior decoration.

Erik Lassen Ed.

History

      Beds, stools, throne chairs, and boxes were the chief forms of furniture in ancient Egypt. Although only a few important examples of actual furniture survive, stone carvings, fresco paintings, and models made as funerary offerings present rich documentary evidence. The bed may have been the earliest form; it was constructed of wood and consisted of a simple framework supported on four legs. A flax cord, plaited, was lashed to the sides of the framework. The cords were woven together from opposite sides of the framework to form a springy surface for the sleeper. In the 18th dynasty (c. 1567–1320 BC) beds sloped up toward the head, and a painted or carved wooden footboard prevented the sleeper from slipping down.

      The great beds found in the tomb of Tutankhamen were put together with bronze hooks and staples so that they could be dismantled or folded to facilitate storage and transportation; furniture existed in small quantities and when the pharaohs toured their lands, they took their beds with them. In the same tomb was a folding wooden bed with bronze hinges.

      Instead of pillows, wooden or ivory headrests were used. These were so essentially individual, being made to the measure of the owner, that they were often placed in tombs to be used by the dead man on his arrival in the land of eternity. Folding headrests were probably for the use of travellers.

      Early stools for ceremonial purposes were merely squared blocks of stone. When made of wood, the stool had a flint seat (later shaped concavely) covered with a soft cushion. In time the stool developed into the chair by the addition of a back and arms. Such throne chairs were reserved for use by personages of great importance. Footstools were of wood. The royal footstool was painted with the figures of traditional enemies of Egypt so that the pharaoh might symbolically tread his enemies under his feet. Carvings of animal feet on straight chair legs were common, as were legs shaped like those of animals. Boxes, often elaborately painted, or baskets were used for keeping clothes or other objects. Tables were almost unknown; a pottery or wooden stand supporting a flat basketwork tray held dishes for a meal, and wooden stands held great pottery jars containing water, wine, or beer.

      The Egyptians used thin veneers of wood glued together for coffin cases; this gave great durability. Egyptian furniture in general was light and easily transportable; its decoration was usually derived from religious symbols, and stylistic change was very slow.

      The furniture of Mesopotamia and neighbouring ancient civilizations of the Middle East had beds, stools, chairs, and boxes as principal forms. Documentary evidence is provided chiefly by relief carvings. The forms were constructed in the same manner as Egyptian furniture except that members were heavier, curves were less frequent, and joints were more abrupt. Ornament was richly applied in the form of cast-bronze and carved-bone finials (crowning ornaments, usually foliated) and studs, many of which survive in museums. Mesopotamia originated three features that were to persist in classical furniture in Greece and Italy and thus were transmitted to other western civilizations. First was the decoration of furniture legs with sharply profiled metal rings, one above another, like many bracelets on an arm; this was the origin of the turned wooden legs so frequent in later styles. Second was the use of heavy fringes on furniture covers, blending the design of frame and cushion into one effect; this was much lightened by classical taste but was revived in Neoclassicism. Third was the typical furniture grouping that survived intact into the Dark Ages of Europe: the couch on which the main personage or personages reclined for eating or conversation; the small table to hold refreshments, which could be moved up to the couch; and the chair, on which sat an entertainer—wife, hetaera (courtesan), musician, or the like—who looked after the desires of the reclining superior personages. From this old hierarchy of furniture derive the cumbersome court regulations concerning who may sit and on what, persisting in the palaces and ceremonies of 20th-century monarchs.

Greece
      Principal furniture forms were couches, chairs (with and without arms), stools, tables, chests, and boxes. From extant examples, the depiction of furniture on vases and in relief carvings, and literary descriptions, much more is known about Greek furniture than about Egyptian. At Knossos, a built-in throne of stucco, much restored, is often considered to represent pre-Hellenic furniture in the Aegean area. Primitive Aegean pottery shows rounded chair forms, perhaps indicating basketry models, and Bronze Age sculpture shows complex-membered chair frames.

      In ancient Greek homes, the couch, used for reclining by day and as a bed by night, held an important place. The earliest couches probably resembled Egyptian beds in structure and possibly in style. The legs occasionally imitated those of animals with claw feet or hoofs, but usually they were either turned on the lathe and ornamented with moldings or cut from a flat slab of wood sharply silhouetted and decorated in various ways—with incised designs or with volutes, rosettes, and other patterns in high relief. From about the 6th century BC, the legs projected above the couch frame; these projections became headboards and footboards, the latter eventually made lower than the headboards. In Hellenistic times headrests and footrests were carved and decorated with bronze medallions carrying busts of children, satyrs, or heads of birds and animals in high relief. Turned legs largely replaced rectangular ones. Although a bronze bed of the 2nd century BC has been found at Priene and marble couches sometimes occur in tombs, the usual material was wood. The legs often terminated in metal feet and sometimes were encased in bronze moldings, and the rails also were sometimes covered with bronze sheathing.

      From the Greek Archaic period onward many varieties of individual seats are known, the most imposing, perhaps, being elaborately adorned, high-backed ceremonial chairs of wood or marble. Like the couches, they were supported on turned legs, legs cut from a rectangular piece of wood, or legs with animal feet; they frequently had arm rails. Another type of boxlike seat with no feet and with or without a back is also found. The klismos chair was lighter and had a curved back and plain, sharply curved legs, indicating a great mastery of wood-working. The diphros was a stool standing on four crossed, turned legs, sometimes connected by stretcher bars and sometimes terminating in hoofs or claw feet. The convenience of folding stools was realized at an early date, and the diphros was popular.

      Greek tables were usually small and easily portable. An interesting type had an oblong top supported by three legs, two at one end and one at the other. These legs usually tapered from the top and terminated in claw feet, and the bronze and stone examples which are occasionally found show carved flutings on the front of the legs and scroll ornament at the side below the table tops. Rectangular tables with four legs were also used, as were round tops.

      Principal furniture forms were couches, chairs with and without arms, stools, tables, chests, and boxes. Excellent documentary evidence is found in mural paintings, relief carvings, and literary descriptions. Extant examples are more common than those of the ancient Near East: a wealth of bronze furniture was recovered at Pompeii; at Herculaneum even wood pieces were partly preserved.

      As in Greece, the couch was a principal furniture form. At Pompeii couches with bronze frames closely resembled Greek examples. Gold, silver, tortoiseshell, bone, and ivory were used for decoration, with veneer of rare woods. Later couches, found in Italy and in distant parts of the empire, were characterized by the high back and sides.

      Roman chairs developed from Greek models. The Greek throne chair evolved into a small armchair with solid rounded back made in one piece with sides set on a rectangular or semicircular base. This armchair was often of wickerwork, wood, or stone. The Greek klismos chair was given heavier structural members by the Romans and was called the cathedra.

      The Romans developed a decorative type of stool, often made in bronze (bronze work). This was supported by four curved legs, ornamented with scrolls. The folding stool, with cross legs sometimes connected by stretcher bars, was used both by Roman officials and in households. Remains of folding stools are known from sites such as those at Ostia, Italy, and barrows in Britain—on the Essex-Cambridgeshire border, and in Kent. This developed into a stool that had more solid double curved legs; examples were found at Pompeii. An example in iron with bronze decorations, even heavier in form, was found at Nijmegen, in The Netherlands.

      Tables with round and rectangular tops and three and four legs were common. Tables with round tops and three legs of animal form became increasingly popular from the 4th century BC onward. A nearly complete wooden table, found in Egypt and now in the Palais du Cinquantenaire, Brussels, is decorated with swans' heads with graceful necks rising out of a band of acanthus foliage, below which are very realistic antelope legs, with hoofs instead of claw feet. This type of table seems to have been popular throughout the Roman empire, as it often appears on tombstones depicting funerary banquets. It is known that citrus wood and Kimeridgian shale were favourite materials. Several complete tables found at Pompeii and Herculaneum, usually in gardens or open courts, are made of marble and decorated with beautifully carved heads of lions and panthers. Another type of smaller table is round or rectangular with only one central leg. Also found are pairs of solid slabs ornamented in high relief, carrying carved tops of marble or wood.

      Pompeian wall paintings show that plain, undecorated wooden tables and benches were used in kitchens and workshops, and some household possessions were kept in cupboards with panelled doors. Rectangular footstools, sometimes with claw feet, were used with the high chairs and couches. Small bronze tripods and stands were also items of Roman furniture. Clothes and money were stored in large wooden chests with panelled sides, standing on square or claw feet. Roman treasure chests were covered with bronze plates or bound with iron and provided with strong locks. Jewelry and personal belongings were kept in caskets, in small round or square boxes, or even in baskets.

Early Middle Ages (Dark Ages)
      With the collapse of the Roman Empire during the 4th–5th centuries, Europe sank into a period in which little furniture, except the most basic, was used: chairs, stools, benches, and primitive chests were the most common items. Several centuries were to pass before the invading Teutonic peoples evolved forms of furniture that approached the Roman standard of domestic equipment.

      Comparatively little furniture of the medieval period in Europe has survived, and only a handful of these pieces date from before the end of the 13th century. One reason for this is the perishable nature of wood, but more important is the fact that furniture was made in relatively small quantities until the Renaissance. Much of the earlier history of furniture has to be drawn from contemporary literature, illuminated manuscripts, Romanesque and Gothic sculpture, and later inventory descriptions.

      There is evidence that certain ancient traditions of furniture making, particularly that of turnery, influenced early medieval craftsmen. Turnery was used in making chairs, stools, and couches in Byzantium, and it seems that this technique was known across Europe as far north as Scandinavia. The Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, which gives some glimpses of the domestic economy of western Europe in about the 7th century, mentions no furniture other than benches and some kind of seat or throne for the overlord.

Later Middle Ages
      In the 14th and 15th centuries there were many developments both in construction and design of furniture throughout Europe; a range of new types, among them cupboards, boxes with compartments, and various sorts of desks, evolved slowly. Most of the furniture produced was such that it could be easily transported. A nobleman who owned more than one dwelling place usually had only one set of furnishings that he carried with him from house to house. Anything that could be moved, and this frequently included the locks on the doors and the window fittings, was carried away and used to furnish the next house en route. Furniture was so scarce that it was quite usual for a visitor to bring his own bed and other necessities with him. These conditions had a double effect on medieval furniture, not only making it difficult for men to possess more than the basic types of furniture but also affecting the design of the furniture itself. Folding chairs and stools, trestle tables with removable tops, and beds with collapsible frameworks were usual.

      The religious houses were an exception to this in that they enjoyed a certain security denied to the outside world. Much of the best furniture of this period was therefore made for use in churches (church) and monasteries (monastery), and many of the ideas and developments that were later to add to the domestic comfort of Europe originated in the cloister. An example can be seen in the early development for ecclesiastical use of the various types of reading and writing furniture, such as lecterns and desks, that show ingenuity in construction. Throughout the Middle Ages and well on into the 16th and 17th centuries, all types of furniture remained scarce, and any reasonably good furniture belonged to the nobility and the wealthy merchants. The household equipment of the peasantry throughout Europe, even as late as the 18th century, was frequently crude in design and roughly constructed.

      Framed panelling (paneling) had been used in ancient times, as examples found at Herculaneum testify; its reintroduction in the Burgundian Netherlands at the beginning of the 15th century was an improvement that soon spread throughout western Europe. Panelled construction solved the problem of building large surface areas, as on the front of a chest or cupboard, which before this time had been limited by the size of individual planks. These planks, usually hewn with an adz, were heavy and liable to warp and split. Panels could be cut thinner, the main strain being taken by the framework, and the furniture was therefore lighter; moreover, if the panels were not fitted too tightly in their stiles, the wood was less likely to split if it did warp. Now that it was possible to construct larger surface areas, a new range of storage furniture, cupboards and chests in particular, was developed.

      Other constructional improvements of the 15th century included the introduction of drawers into cupboards and similar storage furniture, and neater and more efficient joints (joint), such as the mitre and the mortise and tenon. Panelling was frequently decorated with a flat form of ornament called linenfold, or parchment. Linenfold was widely used in the north of France, Flanders, Low Germany north to the Baltic, Scandinavia, and England. The linenfold of France, the Low Countries, and Germany is carved with a sharper definition and greater delicacy than was usual in England and elsewhere. Both panelled furniture and room panelling were decorated with linenfold. Other forms of carved decoration on furniture became more common during the 15th century, when surfaces were carved with tracery and other Gothic motifs. During the Middle Ages a great many pieces of furniture, including those with carved decoration, were painted and sometimes gilded, a practice that continued well on into the Renaissance (the present state of existing pieces, with their plain wooden surfaces, is misleading). Chairs, tables, and various types of cupboards were also frequently draped with bright fabrics, while chairs, settles, and other seat furniture were provided with cushions.

      The chest was the basic type of medieval furniture, serving as cupboard, trunk, seat, and, if necessary, as a simple form of table and desk. It was from this versatile piece of furniture that several other types, such as the cupboard and the box chair, were evolved. Chests were made of six planks, crudely pegged or nailed together and frequently strengthened with iron banding. Examples of this sort, dating from the 13th century and in many instances found in churches, are among the earliest pieces of extant European furniture. The chest remained one of the most important pieces of furniture until the end of the 15th century, when on the Continent the cupboard began to compete with it in usefulness.

      Chairs (chair) remained scarce throughout the Middle Ages, and occupation of a chair long symbolized authority or a mark of honour, and even a large house might possess only chairs for the lord and his wife and perhaps another for a distinguished visitor; the use of the word chairman is a modern reflection of this medieval custom. Early chairs constructed of turned spindles, seen in Romanesque sculpture, have already been mentioned. Later there were two main types. One was a variety of folding chair, with X-shaped frame, made of both wood and metal, the seat and back consisting of rectangular strips of some strong fabric or leather. Eventually there evolved a heavier type of chair. This was basically a development of the chest, and in many cases the seat was hinged, allowing the base to be used for storage. Panelling, often carved with linenfold and sometimes with other Gothic motifs, was used on the back, arms, and base. Many of these chairs had exaggeratedly high backs terminating in elaborately carved canopies; some were freestanding, while others had their backs fixed to the wall in the manner of a church stall. Settles were also used for seating during the 15th century. An innovation on the Continent was the settle with a pivoted bar forming the backrest, which could be swung over to allow a person to sit on either side—evidence of the weight of the furniture of this period.

      Tables (table) were mainly of trestle construction (with a braced frame serving as a support for the tabletop) with long rectangular tops that could be dismantled. During the 15th century on the Continent, smaller tables were made which could be more conveniently moved and, especially, drawn up to the fire. Various forms of cupboards, ambries, and dressoirs (dresser) were developed at this time, panelled and decorated with linenfold or Gothic carved ornament. All these types were basically a chest with doors, of simple rectangular form raised on legs; elaborations of construction and decoration soon followed, as did the specialization of their functions. Cupboards, dressoirs, and credence (sideboard or buffet) tables were used for the storing of plate and for serving at banquets, the plate being displayed on the top and on shelves above and below the main serving surface. Top shelves were sometimes cantilevered or projected on brackets to free the front corners of this surface for use. Other cupboards were made to hold food and day-to-day provisions; in the case of food, or dole cupboards as they were called, the front and sides were pierced for ventilation.

      Medieval beds are known from documents and a few late examples. Recalling Egyptian beds, throughout most of this period a diagonal surface, lifting the head high, was common. Some beds had daringly cantilevered ceilings supported from the headboards.

      Little English (England) furniture survives from medieval times, and, as on the Continent, information must be sought in contemporary references and from the picture of domestic interiors in illustrated manuscripts. Most of these manuscripts are of French or Flemish origin, but they furnish reliable evidence on English interiors because the governing classes, who were practically the sole possessors of proper furniture, copied the domestic habits of the Continent. English oak was the chief material, but softer woods also were used. A certain amount of furniture was imported from abroad, providing new ideas for the English carpenter and joiner. The furniture usually found in important houses consisted of beds, chests, cupboards, tables, benches, and stools.

The Renaissance
      From the beginning of the Renaissance in the early 15th century, there were changes in furniture forms that were to spread over Europe. The growth of a wealthy and powerful bourgeoisie caused the building of more substantial houses and a demand for good furniture. Italian Renaissance furniture shows a strong architectural bias, and the purpose of the piece, as in Roman furniture, was subordinate to its form. The furniture of the early Italian Renaissance is often restrained, with beautiful, simple designs carved in walnut For more elaborate work, sculpture in low relief and stucco (stuccowork) modelled in intricate patterns were much used. The stucco was usually gilded (gilding) all over and picked out in bright colours.

      The cassone, or marriage coffer (hope chest), was a form on which the craftsman's skill was lavished. In addition to elaborate relief work and gilding, these coffers often were painted on the front and sides and occasionally inside the lid as well, with appropriate biblical or mythological scenes. Motifs popular with the Italian carver included cupids, grotesque masks, scrolled foliage, and strapwork. The fixed writing desk is the forerunner of the writing bureau, which became an indispensable article of furniture as writing became more general.

      A type of chair called a sgabello was much favoured at this time in Italy. The seat was a small wooden slab, generally octagonal, supported at front and back by solid boards cut into an ornamental shape; an earlier variety was supported by two legs at the front and one in the rear; a solid piece of wood formed the back. Another chair of the period was the folding X-shaped chair, sometimes called a Dante chair (scissors chair). Tables were generally oblong, supported by columns, consoles (brackets), or terminal figures, with a long central stretcher running from end to end. Italian Renaissance furniture forms reshaped the furniture of the remainder of Europe.

      The furniture of France was among the first to be influenced by the Italian Renaissance. Louis XII and many of his court visited Italy and soon took Italian artists and craftsmen and works of art into France. The French Renaissance of furniture can be divided into two stages. First was a period of transition and adaptation; during the reign of Louis XII and the first part of the reign of Francis I, the pieces were basically Gothic in form, and Gothic ornament was mixed with the cupids, medallion heads, and grotesque decorations of the incoming Renaissance style. During the second phase, from the end of the reign of Francis I, the new style displaced the Gothic. The more exuberant arabesque shapes of Renaissance decoration, however, gave way to increasingly architectural design, and oak was almost entirely superseded by walnut. Centres of furniture making were established at Fontainebleau, where Francis I employed several Italian artists and craftsmen; in Île-de-France, headed by the work of Jacques du Cerceau; and in Burgundy, where, led by the craftsman and designer Hugues Sambin, design was influenced by the Renaissance style evolved in the Netherlands.

      French furniture of the 16th century was remarkably graceful and delicate; it was enriched with inlay of small plaques of figured marble and semiprecious stones, sometimes with inlay or marquetry of ivory, mother-of-pearl, and different coloured woods.

      Chairs began to be lighter in design; the back became narrower, the panelled sides and base were replaced by carved and turned arms and supports, and legs were joined by stretchers at their base. A specialized chair known as a caquetoire, or conversation chair, supposedly designed for ladies to sit and gossip in, had a high, narrow back and curved arms.

      Elaborately carved oblong tables were supported by consoles or fluted columns connected by a stretcher surmounted by an arched colonnade. Chests decorated in the new style were still widely used, although frequently replaced by the armoire (a tall cupboard or wardrobe), which was sometimes made in two stages, the upper compartment containing numerous small drawers.

      Because of the long occupation of Spain by the Moors, a style called Mudéjar (Mudejar) evolved. While furniture in this style remained in form essentially European, decoration had an oriental flavour. A type of cabinet known as vargueno was typically Spanish. The upper part, in chest form, with drawers inside, had a fall front (a hinged writing surface that opened by falling forward), often elaborately mounted in wrought iron and backed by velvet, with a massive iron lock. The cabinets were richly carved, painted, gilded, and inlaid with ivory in a Moorish manner. There was a tendency for Italian models to be followed in the furniture of the 16th and 17th centuries.

      In the 16th century, Italian Renaissance ornament was adopted and transformed by artists and designers of northern Europe, particularly in northern Germany and the Low Countries, who created an independent style of decoration. Strapwork, cartouches, and grotesque masks are characteristic features of this northern Renaissance style, and are found repeatedly in the pattern books of German and Flemish artists of the time—books of ornament which circulated among and influenced metalworkers, carvers, plasterers and furniture makers throughout the north.

      Heavy oak tables, sometimes draw (extension) tables, had massive legs and solid stretchers. Beds were heavily draped to provide privacy, as the bed might be located in any room of the house. Folding wooden chairs and low stools, with more or less elaborate turnery, were still used, besides a new type with baluster-formed or twisted legs and arms, and straight backs heightening through the 17th century.

      The Italian Renaissance did not affect the design or ornament of furniture in England until about 1520. Evolution from the Gothic style was a gradual process, influence coming first from Italy and, in the second half of the 16th century, from the Low Countries. In the early stages, furniture remained Gothic in form, though Italian motifs slowly replaced the older Gothic ornament. Many pieces of early Renaissance English furniture combined linenfold panelling with medallion heads and Italianate cupids, but by the middle of the century both new ornament and new forms had replaced the medieval style. About the middle of the century the direct influence of Italy weakened, and its place was taken by that of the Low Countries. The northern style of Renaissance ornament was propagated in England by pattern books, immigrant workmen, and imported Flemish and German furniture, and before long it was adapted by English craftsmen into an individual and peculiarly English style.

      Characteristic of this style is the enrichment of every surface with flamboyant carved, turned, inlaid, and painted decoration, which strongly reflects the spirit of the English Renaissance. During Elizabeth I's reign there was a considerable and fairly widespread increase in domestic comfort, to be seen in improved construction, multiplication of types, and the tentative beginnings of upholstered furniture. A series of inlaid chests with perspective architectural scenes, often called nonesuch chests, were either imported from Germany or made by German workmen in England. They were influential in propagating the technique of inlaid decoration, which by the end of the century was being applied to every type of furniture.

      Apart from the gradual change from Gothic to Renaissance ornament, the 16th century produced several changes in the design and construction of individual types. Chairs became slightly more common, though even in Elizabeth's own palaces, stools were the usual form of seating. From the box chair evolved a type in which the arms and legs were no longer filled in with panelling but which had plain or turned legs, with shaped arms resting on carved or turned supports. The backs of chairs were still panelled and decorated with carving and inlay or surmounted with a wide and richly carved cresting. Folding chairs, X-shaped and of varying construction, were also used. Chairs without arms, called farthingale chairs (farthingale chair), were introduced in the early 17th century to accommodate the wide skirts, called farthingales, that were popular at the time. Farthingale chairs had upholstered seats and a low, rectangular upholstered back raised on short supports a little above the seat. Armchairs of similar design were made. Turkey work (a type of needlework) and velvet were usually employed for upholstery.

      Early in the 16th century a new style of bed design appeared; the greater part of the frame was left exposed and was enriched with carving and other decoration, making the frame itself an important part of the design. Favourite carvers' motifs for beds and other types of furniture included strapwork, grotesque masks, and caryatids (caryatid) (draped female figures), bulbous turned pillars and supports, arcading (decorating consisting of arches or arcades), and patterns of scrolled foliage. The heavily turned “cup and cover” motif is frequently found on bedposts in the later 16th century. The cumbersome Gothic trestle tables were replaced by “joyned tables,” with tops fixed to the frames. Draw tables, which could be conveniently lengthened by pulling out the two leaves concealed under the top, were also introduced. Table legs and sides were decorated with carving and inlay, and the cup and cover motif is often found on the legs. Various types of cupboards were made, usually in two stages, or levels. In court cupboards both stages were left open. A simple form of chest of drawers was introduced about 1620.

17th century: the Baroque (Baroque period) style
      During the 17th century, the Baroque style had a marked effect upon furniture design throughout western Europe. Large wardrobes, cupboards, and cabinets had twisted columns, broken pediments, and heavy moldings. In Baroque furniture the details are related to the whole; instead of a framework of unrelated surfaces, each detail contributes to the harmonious movement of the overall design. The Baroque style was adopted in the Low Countries in the 1620s and extended late into the 17th century, when Germany and England began to develop it. It owed much to the Asian influence that swept over Europe in the 17th century, when several maritime countries, particularly Portugal, The Netherlands, and England, established regular trading relations with India and East Asia. Lacquered furniture and domestic goods were imported from the East, where Asian craftsmen also worked in a pseudo-European style from designs supplied by the traders. Before the end of the 17th century, Asian decorative techniques were being widely imitated in Europe, and the roots of the “Chinese taste” were firmly entrenched. Heavy tropical woods were also brought to Europe, and from these, furniture was made that borrowed much from the prevailing taste for “Oriental” elaboration.

Flanders and The Netherlands (Netherlands, The)
      The early Flemish Baroque furniture, dating from the second quarter of the 17th century, was but a slight adaptation of the late Renaissance style. Typical are the oak cupboards with four doors and the chairs with seats and backs of velvet or leather held in place by nails.

      In The Netherlands the Baroque style did not encroach on late Renaissance furniture until nearly 1640. Dutch furniture of this period can be distinguished by its simpler design and a preference for molded panels over carved ornament. Later, marquetry decoration and walnut-veneer surfaces became the most common decorative treatments. At the end of the century lacquered furniture became popular.

      Though it was in Italian architecture, painting, and sculpture that the Baroque style was evolved, Italy was not the first to apply this style to furniture. But by the mid-17th century Italy was producing flamboyantly carved, painted, and gilded (gilding) furniture, decorated with such typical motifs as cupids, acanthus, shells, and boldly drawn scrolls, and was further enriching chairs and stools with fine-cut velvets and table tops with marble or pietra dura (a mosaic-like technique in which coloured stones are cut and shaped and inlaid in a design). Chairs and stools with exaggerated scrolled arms and legs, and handsome walnut and ebony cabinets and cupboards with carved decoration on the pediments, friezes, and corners and sometimes inlaid with marble or pietra dura set in molded panels, typify the Italian furniture of the later Baroque phase.

      In France the Italian influence of the 16th century was gradually assimilated, and a national style of furniture was evolved that soon spread its influence into neighbouring countries. The reign of Louis XIII, covering most of the first half of the 17th century, was a time of transition. The Gobelins factory was founded by Louis XIV for the production of deluxe furniture and furnishings for the royal palaces and the national buildings. The painter Charles Le Brun (Le Brun, Charles) was appointed the director in 1663. Furniture was veneered with tortoiseshell or foreign woods, inlaid with brass, pewter and ivory, or heavily gilded all over. At times it was even completely overlaid with repoussé (formed in relief) silver. The name of André-Charles Boulle (Boulle, André-Charles) is particularly associated with this style of decoration. His cabinets and tables were completely covered by sheets of tortoiseshell and brass cut into intricate patterns so as to fit into one another, the tortoiseshell alternately forming the pattern and the ground: hence the two types, boulle (buhl) and counterboulle. The light, fanciful designs of the architect and designer Jean Berain were much used for this work. Heavy gilt bronze mounts protected the corners and other parts from friction and rough handling, and provided further ornament.

      After the Restoration, from 1660 onward, there was almost revolutionary progress in English cabinetmaking, as it came to be called at about this time. On its return, the exiled court introduced French and Dutch fashions, and the English craftsmen were considerably helped in supplying the tastes of the nobility by a large influx of foreign workmen. Furniture became lighter, more highly finished, and better adapted to varying needs. The general increase in technical skill of the cabinetmaker between 1660 and about 1690 is astonishing. Walnut was the favourite wood, though the use of oak continued in the country districts for many generations. New processes appeared, notably veneering (veneer) wide surfaces with thin sheets of wood into which floral patterns in marquetry often were inserted. In the earlier period of the Restoration these patterns were large, but toward the end of the century they grew smaller and more intricate, leading eventually to the type of marquetry made up of numerous small scrolls and called seaweed marquetry.

      The passion for colour found an outlet in lacquer (lacquerwork) decoration in England as in other European countries. The importation of works of art from the East had begun in Tudor times but was of little account until after the Restoration, when the taste became widespread. The diarist John Evelyn and others reported their friends' houses to be furnished with Indian screens or panelled in the finest “japan” (the process that imitated Asian lacquery was called “ japanning” in England).

      New forms of furniture began to develop: the daybed, a form of couch with an adjustable end; the winged armchairs; the upholstered armchair called in the 17th century a sleeping chair; and, a little later, toward the end of the century, sofas with backs and arms carried comfort a step further. Velvet, silks, and needlework were the usual materials for upholstery. Various kinds of writing furniture were rapidly developed, including toward the end of the century, the bureau with enclosed desk and interior fittings of small drawers and pigeonholes.

      Chests of drawers came into more general use. Mirrors were no longer rarities, though glass remained expensive. The frames were carved, lacquered, or decorated with marquetry. Fashions succeeded each other with great rapidity. Chairs show these changes most clearly, developing in a brief period from mere seats of Charles II, while, later, straight tapering baluster forms were used. In the grander beds of this period, the tester (canopy), back, and posts were covered with material. The beds were of enormous height with elaborately molded cornices and had ostrich plumes or vase-shaped finials at the corners of the tester. These state beds were strongly influenced by the designs of the French architect Daniel Marot (Marot, Daniel), who went from France to England to work for William and Mary.

      During the late 17th century and on into the first half of the 18th century, a certain amount of elaborately carved and gilded furniture, much influenced by the style of Louis XIV, was produced in England. Foremost among the makers of this deluxe furniture were three cabinetmakers: John Pelletier, Gerrit Jensen, and James Moore. Toward the end of the 17th century, during the reign of William and Mary, Baroque furniture tended to become simpler and the use of ornament was somewhat restrained. At the beginning of the 18th century, during the reign of Queen Anne (Queen Anne style), a new and simpler style arose, much influenced by the contemporary furniture of The Netherlands. Carving and applied ornament were reduced to a minimum and the beauty of a piece was made to rely on carefully designed curved lines and the colour of fine walnut veneers. The cabriole leg, originally devised in classical times and based on the curve of an animal's leg, was introduced into England from the Continent about 1700. Terminating in a claw-and-ball or paw foot and soon discarding the stretcher, it was widely used on chairs and tables and for every kind of support. The stretcher had become obsolete because of improved joining and gluing. Chairs had hooped uprights, and fiddle-shaped splate curved to support the back. Tallboys, or double chests of drawers, cabinets fitted with shelves, and bureaus in two stages met the demand for greater convenience, as did a new range of dining, card, and other tables.

The American colonies
      As in all colonial settlements, the furniture of the American colonies reflected the style preferences of the individual national groups. This influence, coupled with the existence of new materials and the time lag in transmitting styles and tastes from the home country, in some instances produced highly individual furniture.

      Information in inventories and wills about 17th-century furniture of the English colonies indicates that it existed in its simplest forms—stools, benches, tables, cupboards, and a few chairs. This furniture, often made of oak, recalled the tradition of Elizabethan England and was turned and decorated with chip carving, often picked-out in earth colours. By the end of the century, pine, maple, and other woods were used.

      The Dutch and Scandinavian settlers carried with them individual furniture forms whose influence remained local.

      By 1700 the effect of French and Dutch fashions on late Stuart (Stuart style) furniture in England had become evident in the American colonies. Fashion consciousness appeared, though for decades to come the furniture of the average colonial home kept to the earlier tradition evolved from medieval joining. The box chest was succeeded by the chest of drawers, often placed on a stand with turned legs. Chairs began to replace stools; and the early heavy, turned, and wainscot (panelled back) types gave way to simplified versions of the high-back scrolled forms of the English Restoration fashion. The daybed appeared with its upholstered pad. Small folding tables, cabinets, and the tiered dresser to store and display tableware testify to the rapidly increasing standard of comfort among the more prosperous. Carved surface decoration was largely replaced by colour, through the use of paint, veneers, or inlays of contrasting wood.

      These innovations accompanied the use of the cabriole, or reverse curve, which, about 1725, became the favoured form for legs of chairs, tables, cabinets, and stands. At first it had little or no carving and a simple paw foot, but the design was elaborated, and this cabriole leg became the principal feature of the so-called Queen Anne style that dominated colonial furniture designs until the Revolution. Walnut became the principal wood of the early 18th century.

18th century: the Rococo (Rococo style) style
      The influence of French furniture was predominant in Europe during the 18th century. In the second half of the century England played a leading role in establishing the Neoclassical style, and for supreme craftsmanship provided an inspiration to workshops in several countries; but in the diffusion of the two styles, the Rococo and the Neoclassical, French designs were universally imitated, with varying degrees of success.

      The transitional phase in French furniture from Baroque to Rococo is called Régence (Régence style). The heavy, monumental style of the earlier part of Louis's reign was gradually replaced by a lighter and more fluent curvilinear style. The leading exponent of the Régence style was Charles Cressent (Cressent, Charles), ébéniste (“cabinetmaker”) to the regent Philippe II, duc d'Orléans. In his work the ormolu (a brass imitation of gold) mounts, so important a part of the design of French furniture in the 18th century, became equal to if not more important than, the marquetry decoration of the carcass. The curvilinear form was introduced not only to externals, such as legs and supports, but, in the bombé (rounded sides and front) commodes that first appeared during this period, to the case itself. High-quality marquetry in coloured woods replaced ebony.

      The Rococo style, a development of the Régence, affected French furniture design from about 1735 to 1765. The word is derived from rocailles (rocaille), used to designate the artificial grottoes and fantastic arrangements of rocks in the garden of Versailles; the shell was one of the basic forms of Rococo ornament. The style was based on asymmetrical design, light and full of movement. The furniture of this period was designed on sinuous and complicated lines. Designs of Juste-Aurèle Meissonier, goldsmith to Louis XV, sculptor and architect, were instrumental in creating the Rococo. The repertory of ornament was large and included the C-scroll, scrolled foliage, floral motifs, ribbon, and, on occasion, trophies formed of musical instruments or gardening implements. The Rococo Chinese taste had conventions of its own: pagodas, exotic birds, Chinese figures, icicles, and dripping water. The graceful bombé commode, often with marble top and two or three drawers, the surface enriched with finely modelled ormolu mounts, was popular. Under Cressent's influence the mounts predominated, though later in the century the marquetry decoration gained first importance. Commodes and other pieces were decorated with marquetry of floral or geometrical patterns, or sometimes with lacquer decoration, again combined with ormolu mounts. The most celebrated makers of mounts during Louis XV's reign were Jacques Caffieri and his son Philippe. Jean-François Oeben (Oeben, Jean-François) was made ébéniste du roi (cabinetmaker to the king) in 1754; a pupil of Boulle, he was the most celebrated cabinetmaker of the period.

      About 1720, mahogany was imported into England and slowly superseded walnut as the fashionable wood for furniture. The Palladian (Palladianism) (after the Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio) interiors demanded furniture more striking and larger in scale than the walnut-veneered pieces of the early 18th century. Inspired by the interiors of French and Italian palaces, architects such as William Kent (Kent, William) began to design furniture. The design was classical, in keeping with the traditions of Palladio and the English architect Inigo Jones; the ornament was Baroque. At Holkham Hall in Norfolk, Rousham Hall in Oxfordshire, and elsewhere, Kent's furniture may be seen in its proper environment: gilt mirrors and side tables with sets of chairs and settees (settee) covered with patterned velvets matching the grandeur of elaborate architectural Palladian interior decoration.

      Despite the resistance of the Palladian classicists who deplored its asymmetrical principles, in the 1740s the Rococo style crept into English decoration and furniture design. During this decade pattern books of ornament in the full Rococo style by Matthias Lock and Henry Copland were published in London; and in 1754 Thomas Chippendale (Chippendale, Thomas) published his Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director, which provided patterns for a wide range of English furniture in the Rococo style and its Chinese and Gothic offshoots. During the following years several similar works were published by such craftsmen and designers as William Ince and Thomas Mayhew, Thomas Johnson, and Robert Manwaring. The Rococo style was firmly established in England throughout the 1750s and into the 1760s. Chippendale and other cabinetmakers borrowed not only ornament from the French rocaille but designs for individual types. Chippendale's fame rests largely on his publication, though in fact it has now been more or less conclusively proved that he himself was not responsible for the designs, but employed two other designers, Lock and Copland. There were several cabinetmakers—for example, William Vile and John Cobb—whose only memorial is a small quantity of furniture attributable to them. Though it has become the practice to speak of a Chippendale chair or a Vile commode, this does not imply that the pieces were actually made by these craftsmen but that they were made in their workshops.

      By mid-18th century every act of the day that necessitated the use of furniture was catered to by some specialized piece, while the basic furniture such as chairs, cupboards, beds, and tables were designed and decorated in innumerable forms. The number of variants on the Rococo chair splat runs into several hundreds. The ingenuity of the cabinetmaker and carver knew few limitations.

      An offshoot of the Rococo style, the Gothic (Gothic Revival) taste was particularly well developed in England. Starting early in the century as a literary device, in the 1740s it began to take more solid shape in architecture, interior decoration, and furniture. As with furniture in the Chinese taste, Gothic furniture bore no relation to its medieval equivalents; the ornaments, such as tracery and cusped (a point formed by the intersection of two arcs or foils) arches, applied to furniture were borrowed from Gothic architecture. The Gothic taste was much publicized by the writer Horace Walpole's celebrated villa, Strawberry Hill, in Middlesex, England. Chippendale included designs for furniture in the Gothic taste in all three editions of his Director.

The American colonies
      Shortly after 1750 the earlier cabriole style was transformed by two factors. One was the rapidly increasing popularity of mahogany. The other was the influence of the English version of free Rococo ornament, as reflected in the publication of Chippendale's book of patterns.

      While the Southern planter still depended largely upon London for his fine furnishings, the merchants of Philadelphia, New York, Newport, and Boston were well rewarded by their patronage of local craftsmen. In Philadelphia a local version of the Chippendale style was brought to the highest mastery by such craftsmen as Thomas Affleck, Jonathan Gostelowe, Benjamin Randolph, and William Savery. In Newport, Rhode Island, the genius of the Goddard and Townsend (Townsend family) cabinetmaking families evolved an equally distinctive style by developing a block front decorated by the patterns of the wood grains instead of carving, as used by their contemporaries in Philadelphia. In spite of the Philadelphians' evident desire to match the works of the best London shops, they actually created their own style as distinct from that of England as the innovations of their Newport colleagues. The cabinetmakers of Boston, New York, and the Connecticut valley also produced work of high quality and a definitely local flavour. Maintaining its hold on popular taste until well after the Revolution, this colonial Chippendale retained more of the sturdy elegance of the earlier cabriole style than did its English equivalent. The tendency of English design to massiveness and surface decoration contrasts with the vertical and linear tendency in much colonial design.

18th century: the Neoclassical style
      The Neoclassical style, sometimes called Louis Seize, or Louis XVI (Louis XVI style), began in the 1750s. Tiring of the Rococo style, craftsmen of the 18th century turned for inspiration to classical art. The movement was stimulated by archaeological discoveries, by travel in Italy, Greece, and the Near East, and by the publication, all over Europe, of works on the classical monuments. The Neoclassical style, based on straight lines and rectilinear forms and using a selection of classical ornaments, was first applied to French furniture during the 1760s. Classical motifs at first were sparingly applied to furniture of unchanged form, but slowly the curved line of rococo was replaced by a simpler and more severe rectilinear design: chair legs became straight, tapered, and fluted; commodes and other storage furniture were no longer of bombé form. Marquetry was still widely used for decoration, and some cabinets were made of ebony inset with panels of Japanese lacquer. Boulle, which had not been employed in Louis XV's reign, returned to fashion. A greater number of pieces were signed during this period (signing had been made compulsory in Paris), and Jean-Henri Riesener, Martin Carlin, and Jean Saunier were a few of the leading cabinetmakers. Several German craftsmen migrated to France because of the royal patronage, among them Abraham and David Roentgen, Adam Weisweiler, and Guillaume Beneman.

      These craftsmen were often directly under the patronage of the king, having their workshops in the cellars of the Louvre. Within the shop there was a division of labour, with one craftsman specializing in furniture construction, another in lacquering, and so forth. The craftsmen and the shop were licensed by the government.

 The classical reaction, which set in shortly after 1760, reimposed a classical discipline on design, though of a lighter and more delicate touch than that of the previous classicists, the Palladians. Robert Adam (Adam, Robert), whose name is inseparably associated with this movement, had, like earlier architects, studied in Italy. There he sought inspiration in the monuments of both classical times and the Renaissance. When given a free hand, he included interior decoration and furniture in his architectural schemes, one of the best examples being his alterations and redecorations at Osterley, Middlesex, where he provided harmonious designs for even the lock plates and chimney pieces. His furniture makes restrained use of classical ornament; but paterae (disks with a design in relief or intaglio), husks (a drop ornament made of whorls of conventionalized foliage usually in a diminishing series), rams' heads, and urns are less eloquent of the change than the symmetrical structural lines. Marquetry, ormolu mounts, and painting were employed as decoration. Adam's furniture was copied and modified by contemporary cabinetmakers such as George Hepplewhite (Hepplewhite, George) in his Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Guide (1788).

      In the last 20 years of the 18th century there was a tendency toward greater refinement, lightness, and delicacy in furniture design. Symmetry of form and excellence of proportion were retained for the most part. Heart- and shield-shaped backs on chairs and settees and tapered and fluted supports for tables and other pieces are characteristic; feathers, wheat ears, and shells are prominent in the painted or inlaid decoration. This refinement, strongly feminine in character, is represented in Thomas Sheraton's (Sheraton, Thomas) Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterers' Drawing Book (1791).

      The new classicism of Robert and James Adam came into vogue in the new republic during the last years of the century. The shipowners and merchants of Salem, Boston, and New York equipped their mansions with the work of Samuel McIntire, John Seymour, and Duncan Phyfe, each of whom produced individual interpretations of the Hepplewhite-Sheraton mode. This early Federal style is characterized by small-scale rectangular design and by a preference for light-toned wood finishes. Surfaces are generally unbroken but decorated with bandings and inlays of contrasting woods, or in Phyfe's case with low relief carvings in the Adam manner. The most typical pieces are the sideboard (a piece of dining room furniture with compartments and shelves for dishes) and the small secretary desk, both of which developed a peculiarly American form.

19th century
      The Empire style began in Paris about the time of the Revolution and quickly spread throughout Europe, each country adapting it to its own national taste. In England it is commonly called the Regency style. Two French architects, Charles Percier (Percier, Charles; and Fontaine, Pierre (-François-Léonard)) and Pierre Fontaine (Percier, Charles; and Fontaine, Pierre (-François-Léonard)), who designed the furnishings for the staterooms of Napoleon, contributed in great measure to the creation of the style. Their ideas were incorporated and propagated in Recueil de décorations intérieures (1801 and 1812; “Collection of Interior Decoration”).

      Basically the new style was a continuation of the Neoclassical style, with a much stronger archaeological bias, leading to direct copying of classical types of furniture; to this was added a new repertory of Egyptian ornament, stimulated by Napoleon's campaigns in Egypt. mahogany-veneered furniture with ormolu mounts assumed the shapes of Roman, Greek, and Egyptian chairs and tables, with winged-lion supports and pilasters headed with sphinxes' busts or palm leaves; where no classical prototypes existed, contemporary designs were enlivened with classical ornament.

      In England, Thomas Hope (Hope, Thomas), an amateur designer with some knowledge of antiquities, was the chief exponent of the Regency style and entirely decorated his country house, Deepdene, Surrey, in it. When the fashion was taken up by cabinetmakers, the results were often woefully incongruous. Mahogany and rosewood were used with bronzed or gilt ornament, and metal inlay, a cheaper technique, replaced inlay and marquetry. Along with this style came a renewed enthusiasm for the Chinese taste, as best exemplified in the furniture and decoration of the Brighton Pavilion. In the final stages of the Regency style, both the design and construction of furniture in England and on the Continent showed signs of heaviness and overelaboration that heralded the general decline throughout Europe in the 19th century.

      In the United States the style was widely adopted. Its chief native practitioner was the New York cabinetmaker Duncan Phyfe (Phyfe, Duncan), who in the first decade of the century produced furniture for the wealthy of his city. His designs gave a unique interpretation to Empire ideas. French cabinetmakers, such as Charles-Honoré Lannuier, emigrated to the United States at this time and produced furniture in a stricter French style.

      By the 19th century, with increases in the efficiency of transportation and communication, styles became more universal in their adoption but still maintained national and regional differences.

      The Empire style, which carried over into the 19th century, began a series of styles that revived form and decoration from the past. This reinterpretation often resulted in a product removed from the principles of the original style. The introduction of the machine and of the factory method sometimes brought about a decline in quality in furniture production.

      The Biedermeier style, which originated in Germany and Austria, flourished in the prosperous middle class homes of Europe from about 1815 to 1848. This style is characterized by classical simplicity. Chairs had curved legs, and sofas had rolled arms and generous upholstery. Mahogany veneers and light birch, grained ash, pear, and cherry were used. The design and much of the ornament were influenced by the Empire style, in particular the Grecian element. The style took its name from “Papa Biedermeier,” a fictitious character whose column, offering opinions on taste in furniture, appeared in Austrian newspapers.

      In the 1820s there was a revival of the Gothic style, which in England was partly stimulated by romantic literature such as the novels of Sir Walter Scott. Losing all the lightness and humour of the mid-18th-century Gothic Revival, heavy medieval motifs were profusely and indiscriminately applied to every type of furniture.

      A series of other revival styles followed the Gothic. The Rococo revival was one of the most popular; it borrowed the curvilinear elements of the French Louis XV style, especially the cabriole leg, and restated them in a heavier idiom. Entire suites of this furniture were fashioned in mahogany, rosewood, and walnut, the price being highly dependent upon the amount of carving on the frame.

      During the first half of the 19th century (the exact date is unknown), metal springs (spring) were introduced into furniture construction. The spring construction made chairs and sofas much more comfortable than had the stuffing employed by cabinetmakers during the 18th century.

      Another technical improvement introduced into furniture design was the use of plywood. Plywood had great strength and stability and could be more intricately curved than a natural piece of wood. One of the chief exponents of this technique in the United States was John Henry Belter (Belter, John Henry), who was born in Germany in 1804 and served his cabinetmaker's apprenticeship in Württemberg. He reached a height of popularity in the 1850s. Belter's work is mainly in the Louis XV revival style.

      Michael Thonet, an Austrian craftsman, experimented with bending layers of veneer in Boppard, Germany. Thonet was successful in perfecting a process for bending solid beechwood by heat into curvilinear shapes. His chairs, popular during the latter half of the 19th century, are still made.

      Elizabethan and Louis XIV (Louis XIV style) revival furniture was also very popular. The Baroque twisted upright was one of the chief elements employed. The straight, turned leg was also reintroduced. This elaborately upholstered furniture was produced in suites and was blocky and square in its overall form, in contrast to the Rococo revival form.

      The Louis XVI style was reintroduced in suites of furniture with round tapering legs, oval backs on chairs and sofas, and elaborate upholstery. The Louis XVI leg was often used on comfortable upholstered furniture whose structure consisted primarily of a flexible metal, or “Turkish,” frame. The only wood visible on this furniture was in the legs, the remainder of the frame being completely upholstered. In such furniture the art of the upholsterer reached its height through the use of elaborate tufting, tassels, and braids.

      The English poet and artist William Morris (Morris, William) has been called the father of the modern movement (Arts and Crafts Movement). Critical of the shoddiness of the machine-produced goods of his own day, he turned for inspiration to the handcraftsmanship of the Middle Ages and, basing his own work on their designs and methods, attempted to revive a respect for fine craftsmanship and to stir the aesthetic sense of his contemporaries. His influence, though important, might have been greater if, instead of turning away from the machine, he had applied his high ideals to discovering a way in which machines might be used to the best advantage. Morris' followers in the field of cabinetmaking included such designer-craftsmen as Ernest Gimson (Gimson, Ernest) and the Barnsley family who, working with a few assistants, produced small quantities of high-quality handmade furniture, the craftsmanship of which has never been rivalled. The example of Morris and his followers was so widely copied on the Continent that many people believe modern furniture design originated exclusively there.

      During the third quarter of the century, there was a movement in England toward greater simplicity and aesthetic beauty in furniture. The straight and simple lines of Japanese design served as a source of inspiration. The result was the aesthetic, or artistic, style; its chief exponents, producing both designs and furniture, were Edward Godwin and Christopher Dresser.

      Henry van de Velde (Velde, Henry van de), a Belgian architect and designer, followed in the footsteps of William Morris and was the conscious propagandist of the Art Nouveau style, which flourished from about 1893 to 1910. Characterized by moving, sinuous curves, the style found its inspiration in organic and natural forms and in the Japanese prints that were so popular in Europe during the third quarter of the 19th century. Van de Velde's furniture was often designed en suite so that it would give an effect of totality to a room. The interiors of a house in Brussels, created by another Belgian architect, Victor Horta (Horta, Victor, Baron), well illustrate the sinuous curves and natural forms employed by the Art Nouveau designers. The movement was also adopted in France where Hector Guimard was one of its chief exponents. A variant of the style is seen in furniture produced by the Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The Art Nouveau style in furniture design was not as popular in England or in the United States as it was on the Continent.

Joseph T. Butler

Modern
      After the late 19th century, furniture design in the West was divided into two main categories: revivals of past styles—only occasionally precise reproductions, more often free adaptations; and various expressions of changing modern life. The latter category absorbed the best as well as the most progressive talents of the era.

      Modern furniture design after World War I was of three kinds: functionalist modern—progressive, adhering to an aesthetic of the machine and often designed by leading architects; transitional modern, which came to be called contemporary and was infused with elements from the past; and commercial modern, called “Borax” because hawkers of that cleanser used to offer premiums, and the word became associated with extra values which commercial furniture often offered by the manner in which it was advertised, or in overblown forms and gaudy veneers. All furniture design was influenced by the social and economic trends of the era: formal living declined; mechanization of household labour expanded; living spaces shrank, particularly in height; and home entertainment became important. After World War II, especially, people married at a younger age, total population growth accelerated, and a generally rising standard of living was enjoyed by a vastly enlarged middle-income group. Furniture became smaller, lighter, easier to maintain, and more widely distributed.

Functionalist modern
      About 1925, a new rationality began in furniture design, stimulated by the emergence of progressive experiments typified in the works and theories of the Bauhaus, a revolutionary German school of arts and crafts established in 1919 and staffed by leading architects, designers, and painters until Hitler closed it in 1933. Bauhaus instruction used crafts as experimental techniques and trained students to design for mass production. Low price levels, maximum utility, good quality, and simple, clear forms were considered essentials of well-designed consumer goods. The celebration of modern technology in progressive design was the most effective accomplishment of the Bauhaus. Forms, colours, and materials hitherto confined to shops and laboratories were introduced into homes and offices with programmatic earnestness and considerable stylishness. Tubular chrome-plated metal, black Bakelite, and large unframed planes of glass were typical. Much furniture used at midcentury in reception rooms, terraces, kitchens, or dining alcoves derived from Bauhaus originals. The availability of wood in Scandinavia led, in the 1930s, to similar rational, modern furniture, using a variety of laminating techniques. Related, more ambitious experiments in three-dimensional molding of wood laminates were undertaken in the United States around 1940. Then wartime austerity enforced a salutary simplicity.

      After World War II, earlier design activity resumed. Scandinavian designers abandoned advanced technology for a time and launched a victorious campaign for sculptured, solid-wood furniture in matte finishes that notably enlarged the vocabulary of progressive design. Italian furniture was similar in trend, more open to structural and technological experiments but more accented and less acceptable generally. American modern furniture achieved its first international influence in molded plywood and plastic chairs and in semiarchitectural storage units.

      Functionalist modern furniture consciously related itself to progressive architecture, which aided its steady growth in the third, fourth, and fifth decades of the 20th century; at the same time it was also encouraged by friendly periodicals, shops, and museums. Educational and cultural agencies earlier in the century had generally opposed modern design, but gradually there was a change in attitude and by mid-20th century, it was accepted.

Transitional modern
      Conservative in style (but not imitative), well-constructed, and carefully finished, the best modern furniture earned its reputation of being in good, correct taste. Often relying on handcraft details and on wood, most factories used speeded-up variations of earlier cabinetmaking operations. This, along with the United States' emphasis on artificially stimulated obsolescence, affected all modern design between World Wars I and II. As in the case of stylistic revivals, favourite sources of inspiration for transitional modern were late 18th- and early 19th-century court and country house furniture, with variations in Chinese and Rococo. This furniture served a wide public that found the avant-garde forms and materials too cold and “clinical.”

Commercial modern
      Most modern furniture designed between 1930 and 1940 was bulky, bulbous, glowingly coloured, glossily finished, and rich with hardware or shiny fabric. It pleased the public but not critics and connoisseurs. Gradually, and more noticeably after 1945, stylistic details filtered down from more progressive design levels to appear as commercial fads, such as sectional seating and storage units, spidery metal frames, and plastic-shell seats; the Victorian whatnot (set of open shelves for the display of bric-a-brac) was revived, freestanding and rectilinear, as the room divider. Convertible sofa beds and radio and television cabinets were almost all designed in the commercial manner. The innovation of foam upholstery was bitterly fought by union workmen around 1940 but in 15 years had become commonplace in sleeping and seating furniture.

      In time a continual flow of new production methods effected basic changes. Lighter masses, thinner silhouettes, and new forms made possible by new materials as well as new technologies seemed to put modern furniture design on the threshold of a new era. By 1970, however, faddism and commercial versions of bizarre and bloated shapes in seating furniture again ushered in a new brand of “Borax.”

Edward J. Wormley

China
      Remarkably little systematic study has been made of Chinese furniture. Its origins remain comparatively obscure, its workshops mostly unrecorded, its designers unknown; consequently, its dating is extremely difficult. Most of the forms of Chinese furniture, such as the low table and the covered bed, are found in the oldest Chinese paintings in existence; the designs have been remarkably conservative throughout the ages.

      Chinese furniture can be divided into two main types: lacquered wood pieces either inlaid (inlay) with mother-of-pearl or elaborately carved, and plain hardwood pieces.

      Of the first, almost nothing is known, and dating of pieces is possible only from the designs of decorative motifs, such as dragons and peonies, and from their background motifs. The most important historically in this class are black lacquer (lacquerwork) pieces inlaid with mother-of-pearl that have been preserved in the Imperial repository (Shōsō-in) in Japan from the 8th century. Of the red lacquers, such as seats and tables, the earliest pieces date from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644); their workmanship is characterized by softer contours and freer, more spirited designs than the later pieces of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911/12). These lacquered objects influenced European cabinetmakers.

      Plain hardwood furniture is frequently encountered. Its deserved popularity both in China and the West has been won by its classical simplicity, reserved ornament, and lack of pretense. In these products of the finest workmanship, purity of line, plastic strength, and a flawless polish produce a harmonious, solid effect.

      A Chinese house requires less furniture than a Western house. Correspondingly, the types of furniture are fewer, being limited mainly to wardrobes, chests, tables both high and low of all types and shapes (altar and couch tables, for example), stools, beds (sometimes testered with curtains), screens and stools for use by the bed, and chairs.

      Although the fundamentals of Chinese joinery (joint) must have been formed a millennium before the modern era, the great development in Chinese furniture took place with the introduction of Buddhism from India during the first centuries AD. Before that time the Chinese had sat cross-legged, or knelt on the floor or on stools. Buddhism introduced a more formal kind of sitting on stiff, higher chairs with back rests and with or without side arms. The chests and armoires are superb examples of careful joinery and often have finely worked metal mounts that greatly enhance the beauty of their solid design.

      A number of hardwoods were used for the plain furniture: purple sandalwood (the most distinguished); rosewood of many varieties, mostly imported from Indochina and called “old,” “new,” and “yellow”; redwood; burl (especially for inlay); and so-called chicken-wing wood. Rosewood in its many varieties is perhaps the most frequently encountered and the most popular for its seeming translucence and satin, soft finish. It is above all the faultless workmanship, so typically Chinese, and the fine polish of Chinese furniture that attracts the Westerner. It was the Chinese respect for the spirit of wood and their command of line, curve, and cubic proportions that became the ideal of the 18th-century Western cabinetmaker.

      Japan was one of the few civilizations that did not develop many specialized furniture forms. Instead, the interior architecture of the house, with the garden as its focal point, served the aesthetic and social requirements that furniture has served in many societies. The chief requirement for the few forms that were developed was that they be easily movable.

      Thin mats made of rice straw called tatami covered the floors and were used for sitting. The tatami utilized only natural patterns for decoration, although they often were bound in cloth. Cloth cushions were also used, as were small tables of wood or lacquer, either folding or rigid. Dressing tables and writing tables were specialized forms that evolved from the simple table. The folding screen was an indispensable adjunct to the other furnishings as it could be moved to change the entire aspect of the room. The one stationary piece was the shoin, a type of bay window from which extended a fixed desk used for reading.

      Japanese furniture forms have changed little for centuries. Because there are few extant pieces from the early periods, information about early furniture is gleaned from literary descriptions, engravings on mirrors, clay images, and graphic representations.

      India's place in the history of furniture is that of an adapter or transformer of imported Western styles rather than a creator of independent styles of its own. Domestic furniture in the sense in which it is known in Europe was not traditional in India before the 16th century, and even such familiar objects as tables and chairs were rarely used until the spread of Portuguese, Dutch, and English furniture.

      It was precisely the difficulty of obtaining suitable furniture locally for their settlements that encouraged the European traders to export Western prototypes for copying. It was soon found, however, that the Indian craftsman, although an inaccurate copyist, was a skilled and imaginative adapter of foreign decorative detail. This led to the emergence of an independent Indo-European style of furniture that was much admired for its own sake and subsequently exerted fresh influences in the West. Early Indo-European furniture can be divided into two distinct groups, according to whether the influence was primarily Portuguese or Dutch. (The English did not exert a national influence on styles until the late 18th century.)

      The Indo-Portuguese group includes a northern Indian, or provincial Mughal (Mughal Dynasty), style and a southern, or so-called Goanese, style. The former is artistically the more interesting and includes a variety of furniture decorated with inlaid bone or ivory on ebony and other dark woods. Tables and writing cabinets in the Italian Renaissance form are found in this category because this was the dominant style in Portugal.

      The second Indo-Portuguese style, sometimes called Goanese (though in fact more probably made on the Malabar coast, south of Goa), is more stereotyped in form and in decoration. It is distinguished by large and rather cumbersome cabinets of a type known in Portugal as contador, the inlay ornament being either geometrical or semiabstract. The Indian contribution to this style is more inhibited and lacks altogether the charm and fancifulness of northern Indo-Portuguese furniture.

      Indo-Dutch furniture is easily distinguishable from Indo-Portuguese, since it reflects contemporary Dutch taste as clearly as the latter reflects Portuguese. There are two types of Indo-Dutch furniture. The first, which was made on the Coromandel coast, was mainly in light-coloured woods, the decoration being inlaid bone, incised and lacquered. The second is a style of carved ebony furniture which, although commonly found in India and often thought to be Indian in origin, was in fact made at Batavia (modern Jakarta) in Java, the Dutch administrative headquarters in the East. The carved relief decoration of the ebony furniture is floral in character and closely related to the flowering-tree style of contemporary Indo-Dutch embroidered bedspreads and hangings in which the tulip is prominent.

      With the growth of British power in India in the 18th century, all Indo-European furniture styles came increasingly under English influence. Whole suites were made in ivory in the manner of Chippendale and Sheraton, not only for European buyers but also for Indian rulers who increasingly favoured European styles of furniture.

      In the 19th century, Indian artistic standards degenerated, as is clearly reflected in the furniture of the period. The emphasis was on decorative elaboration for its own sake and, although much 19th-century Indian wood carving shows great technical skill, this rarely compensates for formlessness and stereotyped ornament.

Joseph T. Butler

Additional Reading

General works
Ole Hanscher, Mobelkunsten (1966; Eng. trans., The Art of Furniture, 1967), is a chronological survey of the art of furniture (with illustrations). George Nakashima, The Soul of a Tree: A Woodworker's Reflections (1981), is an inspirational commentary of a designer and crafter on the art of furniture making.

Middle East and classical antiquity
A. Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries, 3rd ed. (1948), indispensable; Howard Carter and A.C. Mace, The Tomb of Thut–Ankh–Amen, 3 vol. (1923–27); Gisela H. Richter, The Furniture of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans (1966), the standard reference work in this area.

Middle Ages
Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de l'époque carlovingienne à la Renaissance, 6 vol. (1858–75), an authoritative work.

Renaissance and later
(Italy): George Leland Hunter, Italian Furniture and Interiors, 2 vol. (1918), mostly illustrations; William M. Odom, A History of Italian Furniture from the 4th to the Early 19th Centuries, 2 vol. (1918–19). (Spain): Arthur Byne and Mildred Stapley, Spanish Interiors and Furniture (1921), profusely illustrated with scale drawings and photographs. (Germany): Heinrich Kreisel, Die Kunst des deutschen Möbels, 2 vol. (1968–70), thorough, illustrated history of German furniture. (France): Pierre Verlet, Le Mobilier royal français, 2 vol. (1945–55); Les Meubles français du XVIIIe siecle, 2 vol. (1956), a learned treatise on French furniture. (England and the colonies): Percy Macquoeo and Ralph Edwards, The Dictionary of English Furniture from the Middle Ages to the Late Georgian Period, 2nd ed., 3 vol. (1954), documented survey of English and American furniture; Ralph Fastenedge, English Furniture Styles from 1500 to 1830 (1962), an excellent elementary introduction to the study of English furniture; Anthony Coleridge, Chippendale Furniture (1968), illustrated study of Chippendale and his contemporaries; Clifford Musgrave, Adam and Hepplewhite and Other NeoClassical Furniture (1966), written by one of the best informed students of the Neoclassical English style of furniture; Charles F. Montgomery, American Furniture (1966), a survey of Federal period furniture. See also Berry B. Tracy, The Federal Furniture and Decorative Arts at Boscobel (1981); Charles Santore, The Windsor Style in America (1981); John T. Kirk, American Furniture and the British Tradition to 1830 (1983).

19th century and modern
R.V. Symonds and B.B. Whineray, Victorian Furniture (1962), with many illustrations; Serge Grandjean, Empire Furniture, 1800 to 1825 (1966); Mikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design from William Morris to Walter Gropius (1960); Jean Cassou, Emile Langue, and Nikolaus Pevsner, Les Sources du vingtieme siecle (1961); John F. Pile, Modern Furniture (1979); Jonathan L. Fairbanks and Elizabeth Bidwell Bates, American Furniture, 1620 to the Present (1981); David A. Hanks, Innovative Furniture in America from 1800 to the Present (1981).

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Universalium. 2010.

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