Ottoman (furniture)

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An ottoman in a living room Ottoman in a living room.jpg
An ottoman in a living room

An ottoman is a piece of furniture. [1] Generally, ottomans have neither backs nor arms. They may be an upholstered low couch or a smaller cushioned seat used as a table, stool or footstool. The seat may have hinges and a lid for the inside hollow, which can be used for storing linen, magazines, or other items, making it a form of storage furniture. [2] [3] The smaller version is usually placed near to an armchair or sofa as part of living room decor, or may be used as a fireside seat. [4]

Contents

Ottoman footstools are often sold as coordinating furniture with armchairs, sofas, or gliders. Other names for this piece of furniture include footstool, [5] hassock, [6] pouf (sometimes spelled pouffe), [7] [8] in Shropshire, England, the old dialect word tumpty, [9] and in Newfoundland humpty. [10]

History

The ottoman traces its roots to furnishing practices in the Ottoman Empire in modern-day Türkiye, where it was the central piece of residential seating, generally designed as a low wooden platform intended to be piled with cushions. It was first developed as sectional furniture that wrapped around three walls of a room, before evolving into smaller versions that fit into the corner of a room [11] or circular padded seats surrounding a column or pole in a public room.

The ottoman was eventually brought to Europe from the Ottoman Empire in the late 18th century and named after its place of origin. The earliest known instance of the use of the name is ottomane in French in 1729. [12] The first known recorded use in English occurs in one of Thomas Jefferson's memorandum books from 1789, "P[ai]d. for an Ottomane of velours d'Utrecht." [13]

Over the subsequent generation, the ottoman became a common piece of bedroom furniture. European ottomans standardized on a smaller size than the traditional Turkish ottoman, and in the 19th century they took on a circular or octagonal shape. The seat was divided in the center by arms or by a central, padded column that might hold a plant or statue. Hinged seats also began to appear, so that the space inside the ottoman could be used to store items.

The ottoman footstool, a closely allied piece of furniture, was an upholstered footstool on four legs, which could also be used as a fireside seat, the seat covered with carpet, embroidery, or beadwork. By the 20th century, the word ottoman encompassed both forms.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cushion</span> Soft bag of ornamental material filled with soft material

A cushion is a soft bag of some ornamental material, usually stuffed with wool, hair, feathers, polyester staple fiber, non-woven material, cotton, or even paper torn into fragments. It may be used for sitting or kneeling upon, or to soften the hardness or angularity of a chair or couch. Decorative cushions often have a patterned cover material, and are used as decoration for furniture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chair</span> Piece of furniture for sitting on

A chair is a type of seat, typically designed for one person and consisting of one or more legs, a flat or slightly angled seat and a back-rest. It may be made of wood, metal, or synthetic materials, and may be padded or upholstered in various colors and fabrics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Couch</span> Furniture for seating two or more people

A couch, also known as a sofa, settee, chesterfield, or davenport, is a cushioned item of furniture that can seat multiple people. It is commonly found in the form of a bench with upholstered armrests and is often fitted with springs and tailored cushion and pillows. Although a couch is used primarily for seating, it may be used for sleeping. In homes, couches are normally put in the family room, living room, den, or lounge. They are sometimes also found in non-residential settings such as hotels, lobbies of commercial offices, waiting rooms, and bars. Couches can also vary in size, color, and design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Settle (furniture)</span> Item of furniture

A settle is a wooden bench, usually with arms and a high back, long enough to accommodate three or four sitters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Upholstery</span> Covering of furniture with padding, springs, webbing, and fabric or leather

Upholstery is the work of providing furniture, especially seats, with padding, springs, webbing, and fabric or leather covers. The word also refers to the materials used to upholster something.

Hassock may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Table (furniture)</span> Piece of furniture with a flat top

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Footstool</span> Piece of furniture used to elevate the feet

A footstool is a piece of furniture or a support used to elevate the feet. There are two main types of footstool, which can be loosely categorized into those designed for comfort and those designed for function.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Davenport (sofa)</span> Type of sofa

Davenport was the name of a series of sofas made by the Massachusetts furniture manufacturer A. H. Davenport and Company, now defunct. Due to the popularity of the furniture at the time, the name davenport became a genericized trademark in parts of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sofa bed</span> Form of sofa that converts into a bed

A sofa bed or sofa-bed is a multifunctional furniture typically consisting of a sofa or couch that, underneath its seating cushions, hides a metal frame and thin mattress that can be unfolded or opened up to make a bed. A western-style futon differs from a sofa bed, although sofa beds using futon mattresses are common.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recliner</span> Type of chair

A recliner is an armchair or sofa that reclines when the occupant lowers the chair's back and raises its front. It has a backrest that can be tilted back, and often a footrest that may be extended by means of a lever on the side of the chair, or may extend automatically when the back is reclined.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Divan (furniture)</span> Couch-like sitting furniture

[Persian divan.Turkish divan, Hindi deevaan originally fromSumerian 𒁾]

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canapé (furniture)</span> Luxurious couch

A canapé is a piece of furniture similar to a couch. The word is typically meant to describe an elegant couch made out of elaborately carved wood with wooden legs, an upholstered back, armrests, and a single long seat that typically seats three, that emerged from France in the 18th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bergère</span> Type of French armchair

A bergère is an enclosed upholstered French armchair (fauteuil) with an upholstered back and armrests on upholstered frames. The seat frame is over-upholstered, but the rest of the wooden framing is exposed: it may be moulded or carved, and of beech, painted or gilded, or of fruitwood, walnut or mahogany with a waxed finish. Padded elbowrests may stand upon the armrests. A bergère is fitted with a loose, but tailored, seat cushion. It is designed for lounging in comfort, with a deeper, wider seat than that of a regular fauteuil, though the bergères by Bellangé in the White House are more formal. A bergère in the eighteenth century was essentially a meuble courant, designed to be moved about to suit convenience, rather than being ranged permanently formally along the walls as part of the decor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grand Confort</span> Furniture piece by Le Corbusier

Grand Confort is a cube-shaped high armchair, whose leather cushions are held in a chrome-plated steel corset. It was designed as a modernist response to the traditional club chair in 1928 by a team of three: Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier, and his cousin and colleague Pierre Jeanneret. The LC-2 and LC-3 were referred as Cusion Baskets by Le Corbusier. They are more colloquially referred to as the petit confort and grand confort due to their respective sizes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marshmallow sofa</span> Sofa designed by Irving Harper

Marshmallow Love Seat #5670, commonly known as the Marshmallow sofa, is a modernist sofa produced by the American furniture company Herman Miller, that was initially manufactured between 1956 and 1961. It is considered the most iconic of all modernist sofas. The sofa was designed by Irving Harper of George Nelson Associates. It was produced in two lengths from 1956 to 1961. It consists of a metal frame with round discs of covered foam, or "marshmallows", spread across the seat and back in a lattice arrangement.

Sofa.com is a UK-based company founded in 2006 whose primary business is selling sofas, sofabeds, chairs and beds online. It has 3 showrooms in London as well as Nottingham, Bath, Glasgow, Harrogate and Guildford. More recently, it has also opened concessions in some House of Fraser department stores. The company was purchased in January 2019 by Frasers Group for "a nominal sum".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis XV furniture</span>

The furniture of the Louis XV period (1715–1774) is characterized by curved forms, lightness, comfort and asymmetry; it replaced the more formal, boxlike and massive furniture of the Louis XIV style. It employed marquetry, using inlays of exotic woods of different colors, as well as ivory and mother of pearl.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Multifunctional furniture</span>

Multifunctional furniture is furniture with several functions combined. The functions combined vary, but a common variant is to incorporate an extra storage function into chair, tables, and so forth, making them so-called storage furniture. It more efficiently uses up living space. Lack of space can be an important reason for choosing such furniture, but combination furniture is also seen in larger homes for more space-efficient utilization. Historically, furniture with transforming mechanisms was called "mechanical furniture".

References

  1. ↑ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ottoman"  . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  2. ↑ "Definition of OTTOMAN". merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2017-11-12.
  3. ↑ "Ottoman". The Free Dictionary.
  4. ↑ "Ottomans For Decoration and Storage". Public Design Center. Archived from the original on 2012-05-01. Retrieved 2012-05-16.
  5. ↑ "footstool". The Free Dictionary.
  6. ↑ "hassock". The Free Dictionary.
  7. ↑ "Pouf (seat)". Cambridge Dictionaries Online. Archived from the original on 2014-04-08. Retrieved 2012-05-16.
  8. ↑ "Pouf". dictionary.reference.com. Archived from the original on 2007-11-12. Retrieved 2012-05-16.
  9. ↑ "What does tumpty mean?". Definitions.net. 2020-07-06. Retrieved 2021-03-16.
  10. ↑ "What does humpty mean?".
  11. ↑ "Ottoman". Britannica. Archived from the original on 2012-05-02. Retrieved 2012-05-16.
  12. ↑ Wikisource-logo.svg One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain :  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ottoman". Encyclopædia Britannica . Vol. 20 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 376.
  13. ↑ Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. "ottoman", accessed 6 March 2013.
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