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A potted history of home furniture

Furniture has been around for as long as humans have been around. As far as the animal kingdom goes we are the only species who adorn their homes with furniture. That’s not to say the Mr Caveman on return from a successful hunting trip with his son didn’t relax upon a fine buffalo leather skin sofa in his living room with a fresh cup of nettle tea on the coffee table of course. There is evidence that early man made an attempt at at least decorating his home. This, in the early days, was mostly confined to rubbing mucky hand prints on the walls and scratching animal shapes onto the living room wall. Early mans flock wallpaper if you will. In the absence of Laurence Llewelyn Bowen or Linda Barker, early man shrugged the need to adorn his home in the fineries of MDF board furniture and rather begin the process of creating a comfortable home for his family that was centered about the fireplace in a very practical solution to bring the living room, dining room and bedroom into the single abode solving many issues we seem to have made worse these days. Sociability for one was at it’s height in our early ancestry. Granted, you were likely to be stabbed wandering accidentally onto your neighbours garden but let’s face facts that was replaced by shooting in the Americas and is still sadly a popular pastime.

What could be more social than gathering around the fire pit after a hard day hunting? The living room of early man was an all in one affair not dissimilar to the bedsit accept with many more creature comforts. The bedroom for example was also part of the living room and although bedroom furniture was hit and miss it had one feature handed down through the eons, the bed. The bed is perhaps the centre of all bedrooms and as far as the bedroom furniture goes is paramount to get the right blend of style with comfort. Our early man would have likely stuffed an old skin with heather and grass to fashion a comfortable bed. This bedroom furniture was also Living room furniture as it’s likely they made comfy leather sofas too. So early man began the furniture revolution through necessity rather than fashion and although the early formation of the continents was yet to be realised there’s almost no doubt they had individual tribal styles akin to the French style furniture, Indian, Italian styles and doubtless something on offer from IKEA too although unlikely as we believe even IKEA aren’t that old!

dining room furniture is another story. Essentially early man would carry his dining room furniture with him and set up his table and chairs wherever he managed to catch a buffalo. This use of portable dining room furniture was a most excellent choice for early man as they were predominantly nomadic so having your furniture with you was paramount. In terms of dining room furniture we assume it was mostly cutlery in flint form and a skin to sit on but very soon as man settled in each continent and they socialised around the fire in the lounge there must have come a time when dining room furniture was needed. The multi functional leather sofas come beds come carpet then transformed into dining room chairs too, without doubt. Soon they would have been sat about the dining room chomping into their daily catches wondering if there was a need for an entertainment unit or in fact what one actually was!

As man became increasingly lazy he invented all types of furniture to make his laziness even more lazy. Long before the use of transport or appliances early man would have created wood furniture to make relaxing at home better. It wasn’t long, in geological terms at least, that early man began to separate the rooms and this gave rise to the living room, dining room and bedrooms that we know today. In the Iron Ages great halls where the norm. Rather than natural caves our ancestors started to build caves from dung, mud and twigs. Think DIY SOS. Much the same format was required. A central fire with sofas around it and toward the edges the bedroom furniture was placed. Again highly social but not very private. The great halls where more likely to be dining rooms for feasting and general gatherings like council meetings for example only more organised.

The early dark ages started to see furniture take shape. Our friends in the Iron Age kept their furniture relatively basic but the advent of the Dark Ages saw style being brought into the design of home furniture. Rooms where also starting to be divided as mankind realised the trouble of bringing the in-laws in for Christmas. The need to be private increased and gave rise to the bedroom and of course bedroom furniture. It wasn’t until relatively later that the dining room started to take shape and soon after that specialist dining room furniture styles began to arrive.

The French led the style revolution as ever and French styled furniture remains as popular today as it did with our relatives hundreds of years ago. Way back in time one simply had to walk to France to fetch quality French furniture and it wasn’t until the coracle became substantial enough that we English began our love affair with importing quality French furniture. the Italians not to be outdone when the word style was mentioned began to create their own unique styles in furniture.

There you have it, a thousand years of home furniture brought up to date. Thanks to early man that today Osborne & Brown are able to offer top quality living room, dining room and bedroom furniture in a range of exciting styles from modern, contemporary to traditional French, Italian and even Indian furniture. It’s all here at Osborne & Brown and there’s no need to risk tribal confrontation, sabre tooth tigers or tar pits because the whole lot is available online at www.osborneandbrown.co.uk with the click of the mouse (not a real one of course).

About the Author

When it comes to choosing the best Living room furniture, with some great help, the choice can be made perfect. The same rule applies for dining room furniture and bedroom furniture. This is where articles like this comes into play.

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