A settle is a wooden bench, usually with arms and a high back, long enough to accommodate three or four sitters. [1]
A settle is a wooden bench, usually with arms and a high back, long enough to accommodate three or four sitters. [1]
Settles are commonly movable, but occasionally fixed. The settle shares with the chest and the chair the distinction of great antiquity. Its high back was a protection from the draughts of medieval buildings, protection which was sometimes increased by the addition of winged ends or a wooden canopy. It was most frequently placed near the fire in the common sitting-room. [1] According to historian Claudia Kinmonth, in early furniture inventories the use of the terms bench and settle were interchangeable, but that generally a settle was understood to have arms. [2]
Constructed of oak or other hardwood, it was extremely heavy, solid, and durable. Few English examples of earlier date than the middle of the 16th century are extant; survivals from the Jacobean period are more numerous. Settles of the more expensive type were often elaborately carved or incised; others were divided into plain panels. They were commonly used in farmhouse kitchens or manorial halls. Its vogue did not long outlast the first half of the 18th century. [1]
Elaborate specimens of oak settles with very tall backs, sometimes a cupboard built into them, or a box under the seat, are referred to as "monks settles", but Frederick Robinson writing in 1905 was of the opinion that none of them were of any great age. Two pre-reformation settles of which he was aware are in Winchester Cathedral. Neither of them contain cupboards or boxes. [3] The English architect and designer William Burges designed the Zodiac settle, made between 1869 and 1870. The settle is painted and illustrated with dancing Zodiac signs, and adorned with inlaid pieces of glass crystal and vellum. [4]
In Ireland, settles were a feature of domestic furniture into the 20th century. Historically, some areas of the country had settles with distinctive features. In the south and west of the country, settles were often constructed with a heavy open frame of pine, which was morticed and tenoned, with a boarded or panelled backrest. These deep settles were wide enough for someone to sleep comfortably on them, but without cushions, they were a less comfortable seat. Irish immigrants brought this style of "open-frame settles" abroad. In Irish homes, the settle was placed along a back wall, near the hearth, with the panelled back protecting the sitter from the cold, damp walls of traditional Irish houses. In parts of Ireland where timber was more scarce, the back panel was simpler with a more economic use of vertical slats rather than panels. Around counties Cork and Kerry, settles were often called "racks" and were noted as uncomfortable items of furniture. The "Carbery settle" is a settle with a one-legged falling table which was found in County Cork. Examples of these settles are extremely rare. Another variation was similar to the chicken coops built into Irish dressers, with the area underneath the seat used to house turkeys or other vulnerable fowl. In a similar fashion to dressers, all settles in Ireland were often painted in bright gloss paint. [2]
The settle bed was a metamorphising piece of furniture, functioning as a seat during the day, and converting into a bed at night which first appeared in Ireland in the early 1600s. The hinged seat could be opened out onto the floor to create a bed. Settle beds were in regular use in Ireland into the 1950s, with some retained as beds for visitors until the 1990s. These beds were also known as "saddle beds", "press beds", or "sepple beds". The beds could be used to accommodate travelling workmen or craftsmen, or for children. Like dressers, it is likely that most settle beds were constructed in situ. [2]
Similar to the settle bed, the settle table (or monk's bench) was a configuration of settle bed which allowed for a hinged back to be tipped 90 degrees for form a table. Settle tables were most common in Ireland in counties Wexford, Kilkenny and Waterford. Examples of settle tables can also be found in England and Wales. [2]
Robinson also describes a specimen of a settle and table combination, with a chest in the seat that was made in the 17th century (see right). "The flanges in the back have a long slit in the lower half, into which fits a peg on the inside of the back of the arm. The back is raised and drawn forwards to serve as a table top as far as the play of the pegs in the slit allows". [3]
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.
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A chest of drawers, also called a dresser or a bureau, is a type of cabinet that has multiple parallel, horizontal drawers generally stacked one above another.
Oakwell Hall is an Elizabethan manor house in Birstall, West Yorkshire, England. The Grade I listed hall is set in period gardens surrounded by 110 acres (0.45 km2) of country park.
Traditionally, a linen-press is a cabinet, usually of woods such as oak, walnut, or mahogany, and designed for storing sheets, table-napkins, clothing, and other textiles. Such linen-presses were made chiefly in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries and are now considered decorative examples of antique furniture. Early versions were often simple, with some exhibiting carving characteristic of Jacobean designs. Examples made during the 18th and 19th centuries often featured expensive veneers and intricate inlays and were designed to occupy prominent places in early bedrooms as storage closets for clothing.
The Tower House, 29 Melbury Road, is a late-Victorian townhouse in the Holland Park district of Kensington and Chelsea, London, built by the architect and designer William Burges as his home. Designed between 1875 and 1881, in the French Gothic Revival style, it was described by the architectural historian J. Mordaunt Crook as "the most complete example of a medieval secular interior produced by the Gothic Revival, and the last". The house is built of red brick, with Bath stone dressings and green roof slates from Cumbria, and has a distinctive cylindrical tower and conical roof. The ground floor contains a drawing room, a dining room and a library, while the first floor has two bedrooms and an armoury. Its exterior and the interior echo elements of Burges's earlier work, particularly Park House in Cardiff and Castell Coch. It was designated a Grade I listed building in 1949.
Nunnington Hall is a country house situated in the English county of North Yorkshire. The river Rye, which gives its name to the local area, Ryedale, runs past the house, flowing away from the village of Nunnington. A stone bridge over the river separates the grounds of the house from the village. Above, a ridge known as Caulkley's Bank lies between Nunnington and the Vale of York to the south. The Vale of Pickering and the North York Moors lie to the north and east. Nunnington Hall is owned, conserved and managed as a visitor attraction by the National Trust.
A wardrobe, also called armoire or almirah, is a standing closet used for storing clothes. The earliest wardrobe was a chest, and it was not until some degree of luxury was attained in regal palaces and the castles of powerful nobles that separate accommodation was provided for the apparel of the great. The name of wardrobe was then given to a room in which the wall-space was filled with closets and lockers, the drawer being a comparatively modern invention. From these cupboards and lockers the modern wardrobe, with its hanging spaces, sliding shelves and drawers, evolved slowly.
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The Nationality Rooms are a group of 31 classrooms in the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning depicting and donated by the national and ethnic groups that helped build the city of Pittsburgh. The rooms are designated as a Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation historical landmark and are located on the 1st and 3rd floors of the Cathedral of Learning, itself a national historic landmark, on the University of Pittsburgh's main campus in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Although of museum caliber, 29 of the 31 rooms are used as daily classrooms by University of Pittsburgh faculty and students, while the other two are display rooms viewed through glass doors, utilized primarily for special events, and can only be explored via special guided tour. The Nationality Rooms also serve in a vigorous program of intercultural involvement and exchange in which the original organizing committees for the rooms remain as participants and which includes a program of annual student scholarship to facilitate study abroad. In addition, the Nationality Rooms inspire lectures, seminars, concerts exhibitions, and social events which focus on the various heritages and traditions of the nations represented. The national, traditional, and religious holidays of the nations represented are celebrated on campus and the rooms are appropriately decorated to reflect these occasions. The Nationality Rooms are available daily for public tours as long as the particular room is not being used for a class or other university function.
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A box-bed is an enclosed bed made to look like a cupboard, half-opened or not. The form originates in western European late medieval furniture.
Ancient furniture was made from many different materials, including reeds, wood, stone, metals, straws, and ivory. It could also be decorated in many different ways. Sometimes furniture would be covered with upholstery, upholstery being padding, springs, webbing, and leather. Features which would mark the top of furniture, called finials, were common. To decorate furniture, contrasting pieces would be inserted into depressions in the furniture. This practice is called inlaying.
A cabinet is a case or cupboard with shelves or drawers for storing or displaying items. Some cabinets are stand alone while others are built in to a wall or are attached to it like a medicine cabinet. Cabinets are typically made of wood, coated steel, or synthetic materials. Commercial grade cabinets usually have a melamine-particleboard substrate and are covered in a high-pressure decorative laminate, commonly referred to as Wilsonart or Formica.
The Zodiac settle is a piece of painted furniture designed by the English architect and designer William Burges and made between 1869 and 1871. A wooden settle designed with Zodiac themes, it was made for Burges' rooms at Buckingham Street, and later moved to the drawing room of The Tower House, the home that he designed for himself in Holland Park. Burges desired to fill his home with furniture "covered with paintings, both ornaments and subjects; it not only did its duty as furniture, but spoke and told a story." At one stage the poet John Betjeman gave the settle to the novelist Evelyn Waugh, and it is now in the collection of The Higgins Art Gallery & Museum in Bedford.
Harriet Putnam Fowler was an American author and poet. Her many publications were chiefly in the genealogical and historical line. She created nearly 20 large manuscript volumes of family histories, which she presented to the Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts. She also compiled several memorial volumes, wrote numerous poems, and published several small volumes.
Furniture and furnishings in early modern and late medieval Scotland were made locally or imported, mostly from Flanders and France. Although few pieces of furniture survive from the early part of the period, a rich vocabulary and typology is preserved in inventories and wills. This documentary evidence in the Scots language details the homes of the wealthy and aristocratic. Textiles and beds belonging to Mary, Queen of Scots are very well documented. Scottish wooden furniture was often carved with the initials of married couples.
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".
An Irish dresser, sometimes known as a kitchen dresser, is a piece of wooden Irish vernacular furniture consisting of open storage or cupboards in the lower part, with shelves and a work surface, and a top part for the display of crockery, but also any objects of monetary or sentimental value.
Robinson, Frederick S. (1905). English Furniture. London: Methuen and co. pp. 114–115, 425 (Plate LVII).
