FURNITURE. Properly. that which fur• nishes. of whatever nature it may be; and in this sense we speak of horse furniture, table furniture, church furniture; and until very modern times • the term included the fixed woodwork of a house or the like. Much the more general application of the term is, since the middle of the nineteenth century, to the articles constructed of wood in tended for the use of persons occupying a house, and this with but an infrequent extension to ar ticles of crockery, or metal, or of textile fabric. Thus, in speaking of the furniture of a bedroom, the mirror, the articles of pottery or porcelain upon the washstand, the bed curtains and cover ings may indeed be included in the general phrase bedroom furniture, but in saying that one is about to purchase bedroom furniture the idea would be generally that of the bedstead, the bu reau, tables, chairs, and the like. It is in this limited and modern sense that the term is used in this article'.
The uses of furniture are chiefly these: Seats, because to many races of men it is found expe dient to rest the body, that is, the trunk, upon a surface raised from ten to eighteen inches above the floor upon which the feet are supported; tables, which, being raised to a reasonable height above the floor (28 to 36 inches), are convenient alike to one sitting or standing, and may be used for permanent or temporary deposit of articles and for the food and the dishes which contain it at mealtime; simple receptacles, as chests, and, for very small articles, caskets, coffers, and the like; receptacles of more complex character and intended for the frequent deposit and frequent removal of the contents, as cabinets (a general term covering pieces of furniture of various forms), and chests of drawers under the different foreign names adopted into the language, as bureau, chiffonnier, commode; and also ward robes, for hanging or with shelves for the deposit of folded garments. These last named, in either form, are often confused with cupboards, and are called by names introduced from the French, as armoire; structures of shelving for the deposit of books and objects of art and curiosity, which structures may be either open or closed, and are covered by such names as bookcase, whatnot, and by foreign terms, such as etagere; and finally, conveniences for writing, combined with some moderate storage of stationery books which, if they are classed by themselves, are not only tables, or chests of drawers, or sets of shelves, but are often a combination of all three, and are known by such names as writing-desk, writing table, secretary, davenport, and by foreign names, such as escritoire and secretaire.
In Asia generally there is no such general use of raised seats as has become a.matter of course to Europeans. They are known, but are rather places of honor. They are not necessarily `thrones' in the technical sense, because indeed the great throne of Persia and many chairs of state among the peoples of Northern India are large and square and cushioned, and are intended for cross-legged sitting; but those articles that most resemble European chairs are, at all events, the 'seats of the mighty.' In general the people of India sit on rugs and hard, flat cushions like small mattresses. Places for sleeping are, on the other hand, very commonly raised from the floor, and bedsteads of some sort are in use throughout the Peninsula of India by all natives who are not of the very poorest class. This may be accounted for perhaps by the great number of poisonous serpents which in India more than elsewhere in the world are allowed to coexist even with the somewhat dense population. The furniture of the modern inhabitants of the Levant, such as the city dwellers of Cairo, Damascus, and Basra, consists primarily of a raised platform, called a deewan (divan). This is essentially a somewhat soft body, like a mattress, covered with a carpet or rugs, upon which it is agreeable to sit cross legged or to recline or lie down, the head, shoul ders, or the whole body being partly supported by cushions of different sizes and shapes. This deewan may be raised to the height of sixteen inches or so, either by a solid structure or by light woodwork. As a general thing it is, what ever its height or size, set upon a raised part of the floor. Although this mattress is movable, and is frequently moved for purposes of cleaning the floor and walls beneath and behind it, it is not adjustable, and cannot be shifted about to different parts of the room, as can a sofa or chair. In some large rooms the raised floor is made so large that the deewan may be carried along three sides of it. Thus, in a plate given by Lane (The Modern Egyptians) of an interior in Cairo, the raised part of the floor is perhaps six inches above the rest, and upon this there is laid a mattress only about four feet wide and extending across the end of the room and along both sides for the whole length of the raised platform. Upon this mattress cushions are ranged along the wall, but all these are movable, and can be used in any way, one or two at a time to support the arm or the back of the sitting person, or the head of one who would lie down.