Furniture

Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things. Storage furniture such as a nightstand often makes use of doors, drawers, shelves and locks to contain, organize or secure smaller objects such as clothes, tools, books, and household goods. Furniture can be a product of design and is considered a form of decorative art. In addition to furniture's functional role, it can serve a symbolic or religious purpose. Domestic furniture works to create, in conjunction with furnishings such as clocks and lighting, comfortable and convenient interior spaces. Furniture can be made from many materials, including metal, plastic, and wood. Furniture can be made using a variety of woodworking joints which often reflect the local culture.

Quotes

• Carved with figures strange and sweet,
  All made out of the carver's brain.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel (c. 1797-1801, published 1816), Part I.

• I love it, I love it, and who shall dare
  To chide me for loving that old arm-chair?
  • Eliza Cook, Old Arm-Chair; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 304.

• Joint-stools were then created; on three legs
  Upborne they stood. Three legs upholding firm
  A massy slab, in fashion square or round.
  On such a stool immortal Alfred sat.
  • William Cowper, Sofa, Book I, line 19; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 304.

• Ingenious Fancy, never better pleased
  Than when employ'd t' accommodate the fair,
  Heard the sweet moan of pity, and devised
  The soft settee; one elbow at each end,
  And in the midst an elbow it received,
  United yet divided, twain at once.
  • William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book I, line 71.

• Necessity invented stools,
  Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs,
  And Luxury the accomplish'd Sofa last.
  • William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book I, line 86.

• A three-legged table, O ye fates!
  • Horace; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 304.

• When on my three-foot stool I sit.
  • William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act III, scene 3, line 89.