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. Rome
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. 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 bce 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. Middle Ages Early Middle 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 and monasteries, 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.