50 Fun Facts About Furniture

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

With almost no wood on Orkney, the villagers built everything from stone; the dresser faced the door of every house.

The French and German words for furniture (meubles, Möbel) come from a Latin word meaning what?

English is unusual in using 'furniture' for household objects specifically.

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

The Romans copied it, and its shape is still part of the vocabulary of furniture design.

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

It was heavy and carved; comparatively little survives from the 5th to 15th centuries.

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

It was so influential that 'Chippendale' became shorthand for any furniture in his style, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Three French monarchs lent their names to 18th-century furniture styles. Which was NOT one of them?

Louis Quatorze, Quinze and Seize; Boulle cabinets peaked under the Sun King.

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

Gebrüder Thonet sold 50 million between 1859 and 1930; it packs flat as six pieces of steam-bent wood, ten screws and two nuts.

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

Michael Thonet had patented his bentwood process in 1856 and made the first bentwood rocking chair in 1860.

What construction defines a Windsor chair?

The seat is usually carved into a shallow saddle shape, and the spindles were traditionally turned on a pole lathe.

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

The United Society of Believers had no interest in reproducing canopy beds or highboys.

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

Despite the name, it was not made for Kandinsky, who merely admired it; the Italian firm Gavina named it decades later.

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

Knoll has made it since 1964 but only named it 'Barcelona' in 1987.

The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman, introduced in 1956, is made and sold by which company?

Charles and Ray Eames built it from moulded plywood and leather; early shells were veneered in Brazilian rosewood.

Arne Jacobsen designed the Egg chair in 1959 for which building?

Fritz Hansen still makes it; a Copenhagen McDonald's even has one.

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

Made for Knoll in 1955-56, the range was first called the Pedestal Group.

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

He made the prototype by laminating fibreglass over a wet-paper-covered plywood mould.

Verner Panton's S-shaped design of the 1960s was a landmark for what reason?

Mies van der Rohe had floated the idea of a stackable plastic chair before World War II; the Dane made it real in the 1960s.

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

More than 100 went into mass production, including the Round Chair and the Wishbone chair, both from 1949.

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

It is injection-moulded in one piece; French engineer Henry Massonnet's Fauteuil 300 of 1972 is one claimed origin.

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

It began as a mail-order business and only started reselling furniture five years later; the first store opened 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?

Sofas take Swedish place names, textiles Danish ones, lamps are named for seas and lakes and outdoor furniture for islands.

IKEA's Billy bookcase, designed in 1979, has sold roughly how many units?

Designer Gillis Lundgren was IKEA's fourth employee; in 2009 the company was making 130,000 a week.

Since which year has IKEA been the world's largest furniture retailer?

Its operational hub remains in Älmhult, though the brand is owned by a Netherlands-based company.

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

'Couch' originally meant an item for lying or sleeping on; settee, chesterfield and davenport are other names.

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

In Turkey it was a low platform piled with cushions; 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?

Philip Stanhope's name stuck; in early 1900s Britain and Canada 'chesterfield' meant any couch.

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

It is related to the English 'credence'; today it means a sideboard or office storage unit.

'Chaise longue' is French for what?

English speakers turned it into 'chaise lounge' by folk etymology when the sofa arrived from France in the late 1700s.

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

The word appeared in English in the early 14th century; armoire and almirah are synonyms.

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

In Britain a dresser is something else entirely: a Welsh dresser with shelves for displaying tableware.

According to legend, William Lawrence Murphy invented his fold-away bed around 1900 in order to do what?

He lived in a one-room San Francisco apartment and the morals of the day frowned on a woman entering a man's bedroom.

Which company was founded after two American cousins patented a wooden recliner in 1928?

Edward Knabusch and Edwin Shoemaker patented an upholstered mechanical model two years later.

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?

His friend Harry Bunnell patented it; the familiar fan-shaped slatted back only arrived in 1938.

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

The science-fiction writer had detailed thermostat-controlled water mattresses in novels decades earlier; a Scottish doctor built one in 1833.

A traditional Japanese futon set consists of a shikibuton and a kakebuton. What are they?

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?

Before that they were mostly ecclesiastical or seigneurial seats of honour; in China chairs spread in the 12th century.

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

Born Gustavus Stoeckel in Wisconsin, his philosophy shaped American Craftsman architecture.

A ladderback chair takes its name from what feature?

By the 17th century it was among the most common chairs in England; makers then began turning them out in walnut instead of humbler woods.

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

He had no daughter named Susan, and the earliest printed use of the name is in the Boston Journal in 1903. Earlier versions 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's pear-shaped sack of polystyrene pellets won the Compasso d'Oro and sits in MoMA and the V&A.

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

Closed, it looks like a cross between a dresser, a slant-top and a bookcase. Specialists call the full form a 'secretary and bookcase'.

The bowl-shaped papasan chair caught on in the US after whom brought them home from Asia?

Cheap and unconventional, it became a 1960s student favourite; Pier 1 Imports began selling it in 1975. The two-seat version is a mamasan.

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

Columbus recorded islanders paddling out to barter cotton and 'hamacas, or nets, in which they sleep' on his first voyage.

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

The top was originally seven-eighths-inch plate glass; in 1965 it was thinned and the base raised, taking the table to 15.75 inches tall.

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

His mechanism is the ancestor of most pull-out sofas sold today. Leonard C. Bailey had patented the first 'folding bed' back in 1899.

More than a quarter of Hans Wegner's Wishbone Chairs are sold in which country?

The 1949 CH24 for Carl Hansen & Søn grew out of Wegner's Chinese Chair series and has a hand-woven paper cord seat. It has never gone out of production.

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

Sailors slept in them on the gun decks; a wooden spreader with notched ends kept the sides taut enough to raise a lip against draughts.