47 Fun Facts About Furniture

The oldest surviving furniture, stone dressers and beds from around 3000 BCE, was found where?

Skara Brae's stone-built houses, with almost no timber available on Orkney, each had a dresser facing the door and box beds against the walls.

The French and German words for furniture come from a Latin word meaning what?

Meubles and Möbel descend from Latin mobilis, 'moveable', so furniture is literally the moveable goods of a house, as opposed to fixed property (immeubles).

The klismos, an elegant chair with a curved backrest and splayed legs, originated in which civilisation?

The klismos belongs to Ancient Greece, appearing on 5th-century BCE painted vases and grave stelae; Rome copied it and neoclassical designers revived it.

Furniture of the European Middle Ages was typically made of which wood?

Oak, abundant across northern Europe, was the standard medieval furniture wood for heavy carved chests and settles; comparatively little survives from the 5th to 15th centuries.

What was Thomas Chippendale's 1754 pattern book, the first comprehensive furniture catalogue, called?

The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director, issued in 1754 with further editions in 1755 and 1762, made 'Chippendale' shorthand for his rococo, gothic and chinoiserie style on both sides of the Atlantic.

Which of these French kings did NOT give his name to a major furniture style?

Louis XVIII, restored in 1814, gave no style his name; Louis XIV, XV and XVI each did, with Boulle marquetry peaking under the Sun King.

Thonet's No. 14 'bistro chair' of 1859 is considered the world's first what?

Thonet's No. 14 is counted as the first mass-produced item of furniture: Gebrüder Thonet sold some 50 million by 1930, shipping it in parts for assembly with screws.

How many pieces of steam-bent wood make up a Thonet No. 14 chair?

Six pieces of steam-bent beech, with ten screws and two nuts, make up the No. 14; Michael Thonet had patented his bending process in 1856.

What construction defines a Windsor chair?

A Windsor chair's legs and back spindles are pushed into holes in a solid wooden seat, carved to a shallow saddle; the spindles were traditionally turned on a pole lathe.

Shaker furniture was developed by a religious sect whose guiding principles were what?

Simplicity, utility and honesty guided the United Society of Believers, so Shaker makers produced plain chairs, tables and built-in cases rather than canopy beds or highboys.

Marcel Breuer designed the tubular-steel Wassily chair while heading which Bauhaus department?

Breuer ran the Bauhaus cabinet-making workshop from 1925 to 1928; the chair, inspired by bicycle handlebars, was named 'Wassily' by the firm Gavina in the 1960s after Kandinsky admired it.

The Barcelona chair was designed by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich for what?

The German Pavilion at the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, designed by Mies, was conceived with a visit by Spain's king and queen in mind; Knoll has produced the chair since 1953.

The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman of 1956 was introduced by which American furniture company?

Herman Miller introduced the chair in 1956 and has produced it since, with Vitra building it for Europe; Charles and Ray Eames used moulded plywood shells veneered in Brazilian rosewood.

Arne Jacobsen designed the Egg chair for which building?

The SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, opened in 1960, was Jacobsen's total design down to the cutlery; the Egg and Swan chairs furnished its lobby and lounges.

Eero Saarinen said he designed the Tulip chair to clear up 'the slum of' what?

Legs, Saarinen said, made 'an ugly, confusing, unrestful world' under chairs and tables; his Pedestal Group for Knoll (1955-56) put the Tulip chair on one stem.

The Ball Chair, a fibreglass sphere on a stem, was designed in 1963 by which Finnish designer?

Eero Aarnio built the Ball Chair's prototype in his own home and showed it at the 1966 Cologne furniture fair, where Asko put it into production.

Roughly how many different chairs did Danish designer Hans Wegner create in his lifetime?

Wegner drew over 500 chairs, of which more than 100 went into production, including the Round Chair of 1949 and the Wishbone chair of 1950.

The white stackable Monobloc, described as the world's most common plastic chair, is made from what?

Polypropylene is injection-moulded into the Monobloc in a single shot; French engineer Henry Massonnet's Fauteuil 300 of 1972 is one claimed origin.

IKEA was founded in 1943 by which 17-year-old?

Ingvar Kamprad, then 17, registered IKEA as a mail-order business in 1943, added furniture in 1948 and opened the first store in Älmhult in 1958.

The letters of IKEA stand for the founder's initials plus what?

Elmtaryd was the farm and Agunnaryd the village in Småland.

According to IKEA's naming system, beds are named after places in which country?

Beds, wardrobes and hall furniture take place names from Norway; sofas and coffee tables take Swedish ones, dining tables and chairs Finnish ones, and garden furniture Scandinavian islands.

Who designed IKEA's Billy bookcase, launched in 1979?

Gillis Lundgren, IKEA's fourth employee, designed the Billy bookcase, launched in 1979, and is also credited with the company's flat-pack approach.

In which year did IKEA become the world's largest furniture retailer?

IKEA became the world's largest furniture retailer in 2008; the brand is owned by Netherlands-based Inter IKEA Systems, while Ingka Group runs most of the stores.

The word 'sofa' reached English via Turkish from an Arabic word meaning what?

Sofa comes via Turkish from Arabic suffa, a ledge or bench of stone or brick along a wall that was piled with cushions for sitting.

The upholstered footstool called a pouffe or hassock takes its more common name from what?

The Ottoman Empire lent its name: in Turkey the ottoman was a low cushioned platform along a wall, and Europe adopted a smaller version in the late 18th century.

Who reputedly commissioned the deep-buttoned leather sofa with arms and back the same height?

The 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Philip Stanhope, is said to have ordered the first one; 'chesterfield' later meant any couch in Canada and early-1900s Britain.

In Italian, the word 'credenza' originally meant what?

Credenza meant belief or trust, as in English 'credence'; the name passed to the sideboard where a servant tasted a noble's food for poison before serving.

'Chaise longue' is French for what?

Chaise longue means long chair; English speakers turned it into 'chaise lounge' by folk etymology after the piece arrived from France around 1800.

Before it meant a piece of furniture, the word 'wardrobe' referred to what?

Wardrobe first meant a room where garments were stored, and the royal Wardrobe was a household department; the word entered English in the early 14th century.

In North American English a chest of drawers is commonly called what?

Americans call a chest of drawers a dresser or bureau; in Britain a dresser is something else entirely, a Welsh dresser with shelves for displaying tableware.

Which recliner company began with two cousins' wooden porch chair of 1928?

La-Z-Boy grew from the 1928 wood-slat reclining porch chair of cousins Edward Knabusch and Edwin Shoemaker in Monroe, Michigan; an upholstered version followed and a naming contest produced the brand.

Who is often wrongly credited with inventing the rocking chair?

It actually appeared in North America in the early 18th century when Franklin was a child; Thonet made the first bentwood rocker in 1860.

The Adirondack chair was invented between 1900 and 1903 by Thomas Lee in which US state?

Lee built it at Westport, New York, in the Adirondacks; his friend Harry Bunnell patented the design in 1905, and the familiar fan-shaped back arrived with Irving Wolpin's 1938 patent.

Whose novels caused Charles Hall's 1971 waterbed patent application to be denied at first?

Robert A. Heinlein had described thermostat-controlled water mattresses in Beyond This Horizon (1942) and Stranger in a Strange Land (1961); Scottish physician Neil Arnott had built a water bed in 1833.

In a traditional futon set, what are the shikibuton and the kakebuton?

The shikibuton is the mattress laid on the tatami and the kakebuton the duvet over it; both are folded away by day, unlike the Western sofa-bed that borrowed the name.

Why did four-poster beds have curtains?

Servants and bodyguards often slept in the same room as royalty.

In which century did chairs finally become common household items in Europe?

Chairs became common in Europe only in the 16th century; before that they were ecclesiastical or seigneurial seats of honour, and most people sat on benches, stools and chests.

Gustav Stickley was a leading American voice of which design school?

Stickley championed the Arts and Crafts movement in America through his magazine The Craftsman (1901-16) and his plain, sturdy 'Mission' furniture; he was born Gustavus Stoeckel in Wisconsin.

A ladderback chair takes its name from what feature?

Horizontal slats in its back, stacked like the rungs of a ladder between two uprights, give the ladderback its name; country and Shaker makers fitted rush or woven-tape seats.

Folklore credits which US president with inventing the lazy Susan for his daughter?

Thomas Jefferson is the folklore inventor, supposedly for a daughter called Susan, but he had no such daughter; before the name caught on in the early 1900s such turntables were called dumbwaiters.

The Sacco, the original bean bag chair of 1968, came from three designers based where?

Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro worked in Turin, Italy; their pear-shaped sack of polystyrene pellets was produced by Zanotta from 1968 and sits in MoMA's collection.

Which tall piece with a fall-front writing flap and bookcase above is also an escritoire?

A secretary, or secretary desk, has a fall-front writing flap over drawers with a bookcase above; the full form is a 'secretary and bookcase'.

Spanish borrowed the word that became 'hammock' from the language of which people?

The Taíno of the Caribbean called their woven sleeping nets hamaca; Columbus's journal of his first voyage in 1492 records islanders bartering cotton and hamacas, and Spanish passed the word to English.

Which artist designed the 1947 glass-topped coffee table with a two-piece wooden base?

Isamu Noguchi's table pairs a freeform glass top with two identical curved wooden pieces that interlock into a self-supporting base; it went into production in 1947.

Bernard Castro launched the 'Castro Convertible' sofa bed in 1931 with how much savings?

Castro, a Sicilian immigrant upholsterer, opened his first shop with $400 in savings; his sofa-bed mechanism became the ancestor of most pull-out sofas, though Leonard C. Bailey had patented a folding bed in 1899.

Which Danish firm has produced Hans Wegner's Wishbone Chair since 1950?

Carl Hansen & Søn has made the Wishbone Chair, model CH24, continuously since 1950; its seat is hand-woven from about 120 metres of paper cord.

In which year did the Royal Navy formally adopt the sling hammock for its sailors?

In 1597 the Royal Navy formally adopted the hammock, slung between the beams of the gun decks; it swung with the ship's motion and was lashed into a roll by day.