The F Word (Furniture For The Home in general)

Member Name: MALU

Product:	Furniture For The Home in general
Date:	01/03/04 (422 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Makes life comfy.

Disadvantages: Bad if you don't have any.

The constant niggles about dooyoo not putting up new categories is getting on my nerves. If your fingers itch and you MUST write something, why not browse through the zillions of categories which have already been put up? Only recently 2 000 (two thousand) travel items have been included (the travel guides declare in lieu of an oath that they have nothing to do with this!) quite a lot of which are in German and not understandable for 99.9% of the British dooyooers, others are simply bizarre, for example ´National Gallery´ without a city or country. Go and have a look!

There are many hidden gems, though, dig them up and write on them! I´ve decided to enlighten you today on the subject Furniture and answer questions you´ve never thought of asking (understandably so).

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

The caves our ancestors moved in after coming down from the trees didn´t have parquet flooring, oh no, they were dirty and full of rocks of different sizes. Where did the Flintstones put the mammoth cutlet after taking it out of the fire? They put it on a rock with an even surface, of course, thus inventing the table. In the beginning they squatted round it during their meals but one day one member of the tribe sat down on a smaller stone and discovered that that was more comfortable and with this action the chair was born.

Where to keep the provisions what with hungry sword tooth tigers and other beasts lurking in the vicinity? Fred and Wilma Flintstone put them into natural clefts into which they had hewn some steps so that the things wouldn´t all be muddled up and rolled a stone in front of them ? cupboard and shelves in one.

I´m sure Wilma had more than one fur dress and made Fred build her a wooden chest in which she could keep her spare outfit; up to the Renaissance clothe
s were folded and kept in chests, only later wardrobes were invented and clothes hung on coat-hangers.

Did the Flintstones have beds? Well, first they used to lie on the ground which they had made a bit softer by putting several layers of grass, leaves and furs on it. When they got older and their bones creaked whenever they lay down or got up from the ground, they either looked for a ledge big enough for their bodies or they built a raised construction out of rocks on which they could put their bedding.

The material has changed, some knick-knack has been added, but on the whole that´s what we still have nowadays, isn´t it?

OTHER COUNTRIES, OTHER CUSTOMS

It is a genetic disposition to think what one knows is what is normal, it´s always the others that are strange. You think you know what furniture looks like? Ha!

In Russia where the winters are very, very cold and 0° C (32° F) mean the beginning of spring people in rural areas used to (I don´t know if they still do it) climb up onto their tiled stoves at night and sleep there. Is the upper level of a stove a bed? What do you do in a bed? You sleep there, right? So whatever construction you sleep on/in is a bed, or is it? The Japanese roll a mat onto the floor and put some bedding on it, is that a bed? Is a hammock a bed?

Can you describe a table? Is it a board with four wooden legs underneath? What about tables with three legs or only one leg? What is a board with no leg swimming in a swimming pool carrying drinks for the swimmers?

What does a bookshelf look like? Two upright boards at the side with some horizontal boards between them? If you screw some horizontal boards with dowels directly onto the wall, have you also got a bookshelf or
not? Who says that the boards must be horizontal? What about the ´bookworm´? (from the net) ´The Bookworm bookshelf was originally designed by (the Israeli furniture designer) Ron Arad to be made from steel but . . . when produced in a technopolymer semi-transluscent plastic, it instantly became a best selling product. The theory is that you are supplied with a length of shelf (comes coiled in a box) and a number of wall brackets (dependant of the length of the shelf). You then draw/design the shape of your own bookworm however you wish. As well as being a bookshelf , book worm also makes a great CD rack, and can also be quite useful in a bathroom!´

If you´ve followed me up to here, you´ll agree that a chair is anything you can sit on (Visit the Vitra Design Musem of Chairs in Weil am Rhein in Germany and you want stop gawking!) ? to cut a long story short, a piece of furniture is defined by its functions and not by its looks.

FURNITURE AND LITERATURE

In Paul Auster?s novel ´Moon Palace´ the protagonist Marco Fogg inherits 1 492 books from his uncle which come to him in several boxes. ´´As it turned out, the boxes were quite useful to me in that state. The apartment on 112th Street was unfurnished, and rather than squander my funds on things I did not want and could not afford, I converted the boxes into several pieces of ´imaginary furniture´. It was a little like working on a puzzle: grouping the cartons into various modular configurations, lining them up in rows, stacking them one of top of another, arranging and rearranging them until they finally began to resemble household objects. One set of sixteen served as the support for my mattress, another set of twelve became a table, others of seven became chairs,
another of two became a bedstand, and so on. . . .

My friends found it a bit odd ?Think of the satisfaction, I would explain to them, of crawling into bed and knowing that your dreams are about to take place on top of nineteenth-century American literature. Imagine the pleasure of sitting down to a meal with the entire Renaissance lurking below your food. . . ´´

MALU´S FURNITURE

After living as a lodger in furnished rooms for 10 years I could´t imagine how I would ever be able to fill a flat with furniture. I´ve been living with my husband in the same four room flat for nearly three decades now and can´t imagine how I could ever live in one room. (as students we even lived together in one room for some time!)

Our main pieces of furniture are: two beds and one bed-settee, two wardrobes, two cupboards, three cabinets, four tables, five chairs, one wicker chair, one sofa, three arm-chairs, two desks, two swivel-chairs, ten bookshelves of different height and width.

Any questions?

Summary: Everything you never wanted to know about the F word