Furniture Trivia
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47 free Furniture trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free Furniture trivia questions with answers. Furniture is the design history you sit on every day, and this quiz covers it from Neolithic stone dressers to flat-pack bookcases. It takes in Skara Brae and ancient Egypt, the Greek klismos, medieval oak, Louis XIV, XV and XVI, Thomas Chippendale's Director, Thonet's steam-bent No. 14 and its 50 million sales, Windsor and Shaker chairs, the Bauhaus and Marcel Breuer's Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona chair, the Eames lounge, Arne Jacobsen's Egg, Saarinen's Tulip, Eero Aarnio's Ball, Verner Panton's plastic S, Hans Wegner's 500 chairs, the Monobloc, and IKEA's founder, acronym, naming rules and Billy bookcase. It also explains where the words come from: sofa, ottoman, credenza, chaise longue, wardrobe and chesterfield, plus the stories behind the Murphy bed, the La-Z-Boy, the waterbed and the Adirondack chair. Easy questions ask what a wardrobe stores and which country IKEA comes from. Medium ones cover famous designers and their chairs. Hard ones want the number of pieces in a Thonet No. 14, the year of Chippendale's catalogue, the Bauhaus workshop Breuer ran and the opera-singer legend behind the fold-away bed. Every answer has been checked against reference articles on furniture history and individual pieces, and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The oldest surviving furniture, stone dressers and beds from around 3000 BCE, was found where?
Skara Brae in Orkney
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.
Q 02The French and German words for furniture come from a Latin word meaning what?
Moveable goods
Meubles and Möbel descend from Latin mobilis, 'moveable', so furniture is literally the moveable goods of a house, as opposed to fixed property (immeubles).
Q 03The klismos, an elegant chair with a curved backrest and splayed legs, originated in which civilisation?
Ancient Greece
The klismos belongs to Ancient Greece, appearing on 5th-century BCE painted vases and grave stelae; Rome copied it and neoclassical designers revived it.
Q 04Furniture of the European Middle Ages was typically made of which wood?
Oak
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.
Q 05What was Thomas Chippendale's 1754 pattern book, the first comprehensive furniture catalogue, called?
The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director
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.
Q 06Which of these French kings did NOT give his name to a major furniture style?
Louis XVIII
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.
Q 07Thonet's No. 14 'bistro chair' of 1859 is considered the world's first what?
Mass-produced item of furniture
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.
Q 08How many pieces of steam-bent wood make up a Thonet No. 14 chair?
Six
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.
Q 09What construction defines a Windsor chair?
Legs and back pushed into holes in a solid wooden seat
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.
Q 10Shaker furniture was developed by a religious sect whose guiding principles were what?
Simplicity, utility and honesty
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.
Q 11Marcel Breuer designed the tubular-steel Wassily chair while heading which Bauhaus department?
Cabinet-making
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.
Q 12The Barcelona chair was designed by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich for what?
The German Pavilion at the 1929 International Exposition
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.
Q 13The Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman of 1956 was introduced by which American furniture company?
Q 21According to IKEA's naming system, beds are named after places in which country?
Norway
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.
Q 22Who designed IKEA's Billy bookcase, launched in 1979?
Gillis Lundgren
Gillis Lundgren, IKEA's fourth employee, designed the Billy bookcase, launched in 1979, and is also credited with the company's flat-pack approach.
Q 23In which year did IKEA become the world's largest furniture retailer?
2008
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.
Herman Miller
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.
Q 14Arne Jacobsen designed the Egg chair for which building?
The SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen
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.
Q 15Eero Saarinen said he designed the Tulip chair to clear up 'the slum of' what?
Legs
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.
Q 16The Ball Chair, a fibreglass sphere on a stem, was designed in 1963 by which Finnish designer?
Eero Aarnio
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.
Q 17Roughly how many different chairs did Danish designer Hans Wegner create in his lifetime?
Over 500
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.
Q 18The white stackable Monobloc, described as the world's most common plastic chair, is made from what?
Polypropylene
Polypropylene is injection-moulded into the Monobloc in a single shot; French engineer Henry Massonnet's Fauteuil 300 of 1972 is one claimed origin.
Q 19IKEA was founded in 1943 by which 17-year-old?
Ingvar Kamprad
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.
Q 20The letters of IKEA stand for the founder's initials plus what?
The family farm and his home village
Elmtaryd was the farm and Agunnaryd the village in Småland.
Q 24The word 'sofa' reached English via Turkish from an Arabic word meaning what?
Ledge or bench
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.
Q 25The upholstered footstool called a pouffe or hassock takes its more common name from what?
The Ottoman Empire
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.
Q 26Who reputedly commissioned the deep-buttoned leather sofa with arms and back the same height?
The 4th Earl of Chesterfield
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.
Q 27In Italian, the word 'credenza' originally meant what?
Belief or trust
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.
Q 28'Chaise longue' is French for what?
Long chair
Chaise longue means long chair; English speakers turned it into 'chaise lounge' by folk etymology after the piece arrived from France around 1800.
Q 29Before it meant a piece of furniture, the word 'wardrobe' referred to what?
A room where garments were stored
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.
Q 30In North American English a chest of drawers is commonly called what?
A dresser or bureau
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.