Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
Furniture
Alternative Title: furnishings
Table of Contents
Introduction
General considerations
History
Furniture, 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.
mahogany card tableCard table, mahogany (primary wood) with original gold patina and gold stenciling, maker unknown, c. 1828; in the Indianapolis Museum of Art. 70.48 × 91.74 × 91.44 cm.Photograph by Jenny O'Donnell. Indianapolis Museum of Art, Thomas W. Ayton Fund, Alliance Art Auction, Eugene Beesley Fund and James V. Sweetser Fund, 80.374
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 bce fulfills the same functional requirements and possesses the same basic features as a modern one. Only since 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
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.
Walnut armchair attributed to an unknown Philadelphia craftsman, c. 1730–40; in the Art Institute of Chicago.Gift of the Antiquarian Society through the Jessie Spalding Landon Fund, 1944.207/Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago
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 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 was 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. Metal
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 bce), were rich in gold mounts (decorative details). In ancient Greece, bronze, 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 (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; for instance, rocking chairs or, perhaps more frequently, garden chairs that can stand out in the rain, protected only by a coat of paint.