FURNITURE, formerly all the various movable appliances or articles in the interior of a house, now more commonly applied to arti cles of wood or metal. The ancient Egyptians aimed to variety rather than symmetry in the arrangement of their houses. They had chairs made of the finest woods in great variety of design, covered with rich cloths or skins, and inlaid with gold or ivory. They also used fold ing stools, sofas, couches and carpets or rugs. Their tables were of variety of shapes and con structions. Bedsteads were made of wicker work and sometimes of bronze. The forms of household articles of furniture found in or represented on Assyrian monuments and re mains show great artistic elaboration and a profusion of highly wrought ornament. The Assyrians were especially skilful in the chas ing of metals, and they delighted in reproducing natural objects on their ornaments. The Greeks had couches covered with skins or drapery, on which several persons might lie with their bodies half raised; these were used at meal times by the men only, women and children sitting on seats; they had large armchairs with footstools, portable small chairs without arms and stools with carved legs made to fold up.
Among the Romans, Greek art gained a predominant influence, and the conquerors of the world were at all times glad to employ natives of Greece to design and execute the works intended to display the opulence of their masters. On the ornaments of the triclinia or couches on which they repose, immense sums were bestowed. They were often inlaid with precious materials, such as ivory, tortoise shell, gold and silver and had ivory or metal feet. They consisted of a framework which was strung with girths, on which rested a mat tress stuffed with straw, wool or feathers, and covered with rich drapery. The lectus cubscula ris, or bed, was higher than the couch, but not unlike it. The tables were generally of costly foreign wood, resting on frames of carved marble or an ivory column. The curule chairs, or seats of state of the patricians and magis trates, were wrought in ivory•, and to form an estimate from the number of beautiful utensils in marble and bronze richly chased and inlaid with silver, that have been found in the ruins of a comparatively insignificant city, Pompeii, the wealth of the Romans in movable property of this nature must have been very great. The
library first appears as a separate apartment in a Roman house; that discovered at Her culaneum was small, and lined with presses about the height of a man, in which the rolls of papyrus and parchment were kept. Still, according to modern ideas, the Roman rooms would seem rather bare of furniture. They had no writing tables or cabinets; couches, chairs, tables and candelabra comprised the whole of the furniture with the exception now and then of a water clock, or a chafing dish.
Among European states from 500 A.D. to 1500, the ecclesiastical style prevailed in furni ture as in every other species of art, attaining its greatest eminence in the decorated Gothic of the 14th century. Articles of furniture pre vious to 1500 are very rare. For three centuries after the Conquest domestic furniture was very scanty. The hall was furnished with tables and benches, the furniture of a bedroom consisted of little more than a bed and a chest. Chairs were large and cumbrous, and were usually fix tures; wooden forms, sometimes with back rails, being placed against the walls. The fur niture of the dining-room was very limited. Boards on trestles were in general use as tables. In the 14th and 15th centuries remarkable prog ress was made and a considerable degree of splendor in furniture was attained. Defense began to be not the only object studied in the construction of buildings. The Gothic panel ing of the carved bedsteads, chairs, screens, etc., was dazzling with scarlet, blue and gold, and costly embroidered hangings and curtains heavy with heraldic symbolism, cabinets, reading-desks, prie-dieus, ivory and enameled coffers, fire dogs or andirons elaborately chased and gilded, be gan to appear.