When furniture arose? Apparently, this happened in those days when people from the era of the primitive communal system proceeded to the creation of the first states. Of course, in those days they had not yet done anything, even remotely similar to modern exquisite furniture for hotels or restaurants. These were very simple, roughly done, but functional things.
On the example of the tribes of Africa, North America, the islands of the Pacific Ocean it is clear that the peoples leading the nomadic lifestyle or do not know class stratification do not know furniture. They are around the grass with mats, simple loungers, which are the boards covered with skins, eat on the floor, covering it with a special carpet, and t. D. Furniture arises in those peoples who lead a sedentary lifestyle. Again, a wide interest in furniture appears where society is divided into rich and poor. Such societies know simple furniture that use the lower segments of the population, and exquisite, luxurious beds or chairs that are created for the nobility, nobles, and higher priesthood.
The oldest furniture that we know was created by the masters of ancient Egypt. In the royal burials, which date back to the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. e, stored benches, chairs, stools. They are by no means so easy, convenient and elegant, such as modern folding chairs. Suffice it to say that all this furniture was very stiff, because the habitual upholstered furniture was invented recently – only in the XVIII century. During the time of ancient Egypt, on a chair or stool, to make it softer, special pillows were laid. It would seem that there is a difficult thing-to come up with something in order to make a pillow in an integral belonging of a stool, to invent a soft seat. But it took thousands of years to make furniturers come to this thought. Therefore, in ancient Egypt, even the throne of the pharaoh, which, in fact, was a chair decorated with carvings, ornaments, precious stones, gold overlays, was very tough.
It is curious that it was the Egyptians who came up with the furniture on which they were sitting. The first piece of such furniture was a bench. The stool, which was also invented in ancient Egypt, was a kind of result of the development of the bench: at first it became slightly lower, then it began to be done shorter so that fewer people were placed on the bench. Then she was made even shorter, then – more and more, while from the piece of furniture, on which several people sits at the same time, she did not turn into an individual seat.
It is also worth paying attention to the fact that in antiquity people did not know the specialization of furniture. In a modern furniture store, we see a cabinet for a bedroom, restaurant chairs, office tables, etc. D. People living a thousand years ago knew just a table, just a chair, just a bed. They would probably be very surprised by finding out that we come up with various types of furniture (the article “Unusual trends of modernity”), having different purposes. However, in this furniture repeats the history of the development of many other phenomena of civilization. At first, almost any thing is universal, such as an ax: a primitive man did not think that axes could be divided into carpentry, combat, axes for lumberjacks, etc. D. The same applies to furniture, so the stool of the same design could stand in the palace of the pharaoh and in the ancient Egyptian tavern.