Furniture refers to objects intended to support various human activities, such as seating (e.g., stools, chairs, and sofas), eating (tables), storing items, working, and sleeping (e.g., beds and hammocks). Furniture is also used to hold objects at a convenient height for work (as horizontal surfaces above the ground, such as tables and desks), or to store things (e.g., cupboards, shelves, and drawers). Furniture can be a product of design and can be considered a form of decorative art. In addition to furniture's functional role, it can serve a symbolic or religious purpose. It can be made from a vast multitude of materials, including metal, plastic, and wood. Furniture can be made using a variety of woodworking joints, which often reflects the local culture.
People have been using natural objects, such as tree stumps, rocks, and moss, as furniture since the beginning of human civilization, this continues today in some households and campsites. Archaeological research shows that from around 30,000 years ago, people began to construct and carve their own furniture, using wood, stone, and animal bones. Early furniture from this period is known from artwork such as a Venus figurine found in Russia, which depicts a goddess seated on a throne. The first surviving extant furniture is in the homes of Skara Brae in Scotland and includes cupboards, dressers and beds all constructed from stone. Complex construction techniques such as joinery began in the early dynastic period of ancient Egypt. This era saw constructed wooden pieces, including stools and tables, sometimes decorated with valuable metals or ivory. The evolution of furniture design continued in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, with thrones being commonplace as well as the klinai, multipurpose couches used for relaxing, eating, and sleeping. The furniture of the Middle Ages was usually heavy, oak, and ornamented. Furniture design expanded during the Italian Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth century. The seventeenth century, in both Southern and Northern Europe, was characterized by opulent, often gilded Baroque designs. The nineteenth century is usually defined by revival styles. The first three-quarters of the twentieth century are often seen as the march towards Modernism. One unique outgrowth of post-modern furniture design is a return to natural shapes and textures.
Etymology The English word furniture is derived from the French word , the noun form of , which means to supply or provide. Thus fourniture in French means supplies or provisions. The English usage, referring specifically to household objects, is specific to that language; French and other Romance languages as well as German use variants of the word meubles, which derives from Latin mobilia, meaning "moveable goods".
History
Prehistory The practice of using natural objects as rudimentary pieces of furniture likely dates to the beginning of human civilization. Early humans are likely to have used tree stumps as seats, rocks as rudimentary tables, and mossy areas for sleeping. During the late Paleolithic or early Neolithic period, from around 30,000 years ago, people began constructing and carving their own furniture, using wood, stone and animal bones. The earliest evidence for the existence of constructed furniture is a Venus figurine found at the Gagarino site in Russia, which depicts the goddess in a sitting position, on a throne. A similar statue of a seated woman was found in Çatalhöyük in Turkey, dating to between 6000 and 5500 BCE. The inclusion of such a seat in the figurines implies that these were already common artefacts of that age.
A range of unique stone furniture has been excavated in Skara Brae, a Neolithic village in Orkney, Scotland The site dates from 3100 to 2500 BCE and due to a shortage of wood in Orkney, the people of Skara Brae were forced to build with stone, a readily available material that could be worked easily and turned into items for use within the household. Each house shows a high degree of sophistication and was equipped with an extensive assortment of stone furniture, ranging from cupboards, dressers, and beds to shelves, stone seats, and limpet tanks. The stone dresser was regarded as the most important as it symbolically faces the entrance in each house and is therefore the first item seen when entering, perhaps displaying symbolic objects, including decorative artwork such as several Neolithic carved stone balls also found at the site.
Antiquity
Ancient furniture has been excavated from the 8th-century BCE Phrygian tumulus, known as the Midas Mound, in Gordion, Turkey. Pieces discovered there include tables and inlaid serving stands.Surviving furniture from the 9th–8th-century BCE Assyrian palace of Nimrud has also been found. The earliest surviving carpet, the "Pazyryk Carpet" was discovered in a frozen tomb in Siberia and has been dated to between the 6th and 3rd centuries BCE.
Ancient Egypt
Civilization in ancient Egypt began with the clearance and irrigation of land along the banks of the River Nile, which began in about 6000 BCE. By that time, society in the Nile Valley was already engaged in organized agriculture and the construction of large buildings.Redford, Donald B. Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times. (Princeton: University Press, 1992), p. 6. At this period, Egyptians in the southwestern corner of Egypt were herding cattle and also constructing large buildings. Mortar was in use by around 4000 BCE The inhabitants of the Nile Valley and delta were self-sufficient and were raising barley and emmer (an early variety of wheat) and stored it in pits lined with reed mats. They raised cattle, goats and pigs and they wove linens and baskets. Evidence of furniture from the predynastic period is scarce, but samples from First Dynasty tombs indicate an already advanced use of furnishings in the houses of the age.
During the Dynastic Period, which began in around 3200 BCE, Egyptian art developed significantly, and this included furniture design. Egyptian furniture was primarily constructed using wood, but other materials were sometimes used, such as leather, and pieces were often adorned with gold, silver, ivory and ebony, for decoration. Wood found in Egypt was not suitable for furniture construction, so it had to be imported into the country from other places, particularly Phoenicia. The scarcity of wood necessitated innovation in construction techniques. The use of scarf joints to join two shorter pieces together and form a longer beam was one example of this, as well as construction of veneers in which low quality cheap wood was used as the main building material, with a thin layer of expensive wood on the surface.
The earliest used seating furniture in the dynastic period was the stool, which was used throughout Egyptian society, from the royal family down to ordinary citizens. Various different designs were used, including stools with four vertical legs, and others with crossed splayed legs; almost all had rectangular seats, however. Examples include the workman's stool, a simple three legged structure with a concave seat, designed for comfort during labour, and the much more ornate folding stool, with crossed folding legs, which were decorated with carved duck heads and ivory, and had hinges made of bronze. Full chairs were much rarer in early Egypt, being limited to only wealthy and high ranking people, and seen as a status symbol; they did not reach ordinary households until the 18th dynasty. Early examples were formed by adding a straight back to a stool, while later chairs had an inclined back. Other furniture types in ancient Egypt include tables, which are heavily represented in art, but almost nonexistent as preserved items – perhaps because they were placed outside tombs rather than within, as well as beds and storage chests.
Ancient Greece
Historical knowledge of Greek furniture is derived from various sources, including literature, terracotta, sculptures, statuettes, and painted vases. Some pieces survive to this day, primarily those constructed from metals, including bronze, or marble. Wood was an important and common material in Greek furniture, both domestic and imported. A common technique was to construct the main sections of the furniture with cheap solid wood, then apply a veneer using an expensive wood, such as maple or ebony. Greek furniture construction also made use of dowels and tenons for joining the wooden parts of a piece together. Wood was shaped by carving, steam treatment, and the lathe, and furniture is known to have been decorated with ivory, tortoise shell, glass, gold or other precious materials.
The modern word "throne" is derived from the ancient Greek thronos (Greek singular: θρόνος), which was a seat designated for deities or individuals of high status/hierarchy or honor. The colossal chryselephantine statue of Zeus at Olympia, constructed by Phidias and lost in antiquity, featured the god Zeus seated on an elaborate throne, which was decorated with gold, precious stones, ebony and ivory, according to Pausanias. Other Greek seats included the klismos, an elegant Greek chair with a curved backrest and legs whose form was copied by the Romans and is now part of the vocabulary of furniture design,Linda Maria Gigante, "Funerary Art," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, Vol. 1, ed. Michael Gagarin and Elaine Fantham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 246. the backless stool (diphros), which existed in most Greek homes, and folding stool. The kline, used from the late seventh century BCE,Simpson, 253. was a multipurpose piece used as a bed, but also as a sofa and for reclining during meals. It was rectangular and supported on four legs, two of which could be longer than the other, providing support for an armrest or headboard.Andrianou, 36. Mattresses, rugs, and blankets may have been used, but there is no evidence for sheets.
In general, Greek tables were low and often appear in depictions alongside klinai. The most common type of Greek table had a rectangular top supported on three legs, although numerous configurations exist, including trapezoid and circular. Tables in ancient Greece were used mostly for dining purposes – in depictions of banquets, it appears as though each participant would have used a single table, rather than a collective use of a larger piece. Tables also figured prominently in religious contexts, as indicated in vase paintings, for example, the wine vessel associated with Dionysus, dating to around 450 BCE and now housed at the Art Institute of Chicago. Chests were used for storage of clothes and personal items and were usually rectangular with hinged lids. Chests depicted in terracotta show elaborate patterns and design, including the Greek fret.
Ancient Rome Roman furniture was based heavily on Greek furniture, in style and construction. Rome gradually superseded Greece as the foremost culture of Europe, leading eventually to Greece becoming a province of Rome in 146 BC. Rome thus took over production and distribution of Greek furniture, and the boundary between the two is blurred. The Romans did have some limited innovation outside of Greek influence, and styles distinctly their own.
Roman furniture was constructed principally using wood, metal and stone, with marble and limestone used for outside furniture. Very little wooden furniture survives intact, but there is evidence that a variety of woods were used, including maple, citron, beech, oak, and holly. Some imported wood such as satinwood was used for decoration. The most commonly used metal was bronze, of which numerous examples have survived, for example, headrests for couches and metal stools. Similar to the Greeks, Romans used tenons, dowels, nails, and glue to join wooden pieces together, and also practised veneering.