Furniture refers to objects intended to support various human activities such as seating, eating (tables), storing items, working, and sleeping. Furniture is also used to hold objects at a convenient height for work, or to store things. Furniture can be a product of design and can be considered a form of decorative art. In addition to furniture's functional role, it can serve a symbolic or religious purpose. It can be made from a vast multitude of materials, including metal, plastic, and wood. Furniture can be made using a variety of woodworking joints which often reflects the local culture.
A closet is an enclosed space, with a door, used for storage, particularly that of clothes. Fitted closets are built into the walls of the house so that they take up no apparent space in the room. Closets are often built under stairs, thereby using awkward space that would otherwise go unused.
A desk or bureau is a piece of furniture with a flat table-style work surface used in a school, office, home or the like for academic, professional or domestic activities such as reading, writing, or using equipment such as a computer. Desks often have one or more drawers, compartments, or pigeonholes to store items such as office supplies and papers. Desks are usually made of wood or metal, although materials such as glass are sometimes seen.
A credenza desk is a modern desk form usually placed next to a wall as a secondary work surface to that of another desk, such as a pedestal desk, in a typical executive office.
A buffet is a system of serving meals in which food is placed in a public area where the diners serve themselves. A form of service à la française, buffets are offered at various places including hotels, restaurants, and many social events. Buffet restaurants normally offer all-you-can-eat food for a set price, but some measure prices by weight or by number of dishes. Buffets usually have some or mostly hot dishes, so the term cold buffet has been developed to describe formats lacking hot food. Hot or cold buffets usually involve dishware and utensils, but a finger buffet is an array of foods that are designed to be small and easily consumed only by hand, such as cupcakes, slices of pizza, foods on cocktail sticks, etc.
A sideboard, also called a buffet, is an item of furniture traditionally used in the dining room for serving food, for displaying serving dishes, and for storage. It usually consists of a set of cabinets, or cupboards, and one or more drawers, all topped by a wooden surface for conveniently holding food, serving dishes, or lighting devices. The words sideboard and buffet are somewhat interchangeable, but if the item has short legs, or a base that sits directly on the floor with no legs, it is more likely to be called a sideboard; if it has longer legs, it is more likely to be called a buffet.
A table is an item of furniture with a raised flat top and is supported most commonly by 1 to 4 legs. It is used as a surface for working at, eating from or on which to place things. Some common types of tables are the dining room tables, which are used for seated persons to eat meals; the coffee table, which is a low table used in living rooms to display items or serve refreshments; and the bedside table, which is commonly used to place an alarm clock and a lamp. There are also a range of specialized types of tables, such as drafting tables, used for doing architectural drawings, and sewing tables.
An urn is a vase, often with a cover, with a typically narrowed neck above a rounded body and a footed pedestal. Describing a vessel as an "urn", as opposed to a vase or other terms, generally reflects its use rather than any particular shape or origin. The term is especially often used for funerary urns, vessels used in burials, either to hold the cremated ashes or as grave goods, but is used in many other contexts.
In woodworking, a trestle table is a table consisting of two or three trestle supports, often linked by a stretcher, over which a board or tabletop is placed. In the Middle Ages, the trestle table was often little more than loose boards over trestle legs for ease of assembly and storage. This simple, collapsible style remained the most common Western form of table until the 16th century, when the basic trestle design gave way to stronger frame-based structures such as gateleg and refectory tables. Ease of assembly and storage has made it the ideal occasional table, and it remains a popular form of dining table, as those seated are not so inconvenienced as they might be with the more usual arrangement of a fixed leg at each corner.
The Family Dining Room is a dining room located on the State Floor of the White House, the official residence of the president of the United States. The room is used for smaller, more private meals than those served in the State Dining Room. Used in the 1800s as a space for the First Family to have their meals, the Family Dining Room was used less for family meals and more for working lunches and small dinners in the 20th and 21st centuries.
A cabinet was a private room in the houses and palaces of early modern Europe serving as a study or retreat, usually for a man. The cabinet would be furnished with books and works of art, and sited adjacent to his bedchamber, the equivalent of the Italian Renaissance studiolo. In the Late Medieval period, such newly perceived requirements for privacy had been served by the solar of the English gentry house, and a similar, less secular purpose had been served by a private oratory.
Daniel Pabst was a German-born American cabinetmaker of the Victorian Era. He is credited with some of the most extraordinary custom interiors and hand-crafted furniture in the United States. Sometimes working in collaboration with architect Frank Furness (1839–1912), he made pieces in the Renaissance Revival, Neo-Grec, Modern Gothic, and Colonial Revival styles. Examples of his work are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
This sideboard was designed by Edward William Godwin (1833–1886), who was one of the most important exponents of Victorian Japonisme or Anglo-Japanese style, the appropriation of Japanese artistic styles.
Italian Rococo interior design refers to interior decoration in Italy during the Rococo period, which went from the early 18th century to around the 1760s.
A Welsh dresser, sometimes known as a kitchen dresser, pewter cupboard or china hutch, is a piece of wooden furniture consisting of drawers and cupboards in the lower part, with shelves and perhaps a sideboard on top. Traditionally, it is a utilitarian piece of furniture used to store and display crockery, silverware and pewter-ware, but is also used to display general ornaments.
A cellarette or cellaret is a small furniture cabinet, available in various sizes, shapes, and designs which is used to store bottles of alcoholic beverages such as wine or whiskey. They usually come with some type of security such as a lock to protect the contents. Such wooden containers for alcoholic beverages appeared in Europe as early as the fifteenth century. They first appeared in America in the early eighteenth century and were popular through the nineteenth century. They were usually made of a decorative wood and sometimes had special designs so as to conceal them from the casual observer. They were found in pubs, taverns, and homes of the wealthy.
Warren Platner was an American architect and interior designer.
Furniture created in the Art Nouveau style was prominent from the beginning of the 1890s to the beginning of the First World War in 1914. It characteristically used forms based on nature, such as vines, flowers and water lilies, and featured curving and undulating lines, sometimes known as the whiplash line, both in the form and the decoration. Other common characteristics were asymmetry and polychromy, achieved by inlaying different colored woods.
The Gallia family Hoffman apartment collection is a set of furniture and decorative objects that are the surviving Vienna Secession style contents of the 1913 apartment of wealthy Austrian businessman Moritz Gallia and his wife and Hermine, mostly designed by leading architect and designer Josef Hoffman. When the Gallia's children had to flee the Anschluss with Nazi Germany in 1938, they brought what remained with them to Australia, a place 'as far away as they could get', where it was subsequently purchased in 1976 by National Gallery of Victoria, and pieces have been on permanent display since 1984.
