Upholstery and How its History Makes Our Furniture Comfortable Today

By Bill Primavera

In my living room sits a Queen Anne-style wingback chair, probably from 1900 or so, that has been through the wringer of an upholstery mishap and its correction.

When I first acquired it, the chair had come with graceful curvilinear lines that seemed to be short on padding to be comfortable.

So, when I sent it to an upholsterer to be redone with new stuffing, I made the mistake of overreacting: I specified that it be “overstuffed.” The result is that it was returned to me looking like an amorphous giant blimp, with the graceful lines all but obscured.

I had to wait another 15 years or so when it was ready for another reupholstering before that condition could be corrected. I have since been more conservative in my upholstery requests.

While seating surfaces during the Dark Ages were rather hard on the posterior, the Industrial Revolution allowed for more complex furniture, as well as more elaborate stuffing and interesting fabrics. Today, upholstery is part of everyday life for everyone seeking comfort in their homes.

The foundations of what we now call upholstery were laid in the late 16th century, the Elizabethan era, when crude forms of stuffed chairs became more common as replacements for wooden stools. The word upholstery comes from the Middle English word “upholder,” which referred to an artisan who “held up” their goods.

Traditional upholstery uses materials like coil springs (post-1850), animal hair (horse, hog and cow), coir, straw and hay, hessians, linen scrims, wadding, etc., and is done by hand, building each layer up. We may be spoiled for choice when it comes to furnishing our homes with luxury fabrics and unique cushions, but things weren’t always this way. Our love affair with comfortable and contemporary soft furnishing dates back to Egyptian times, when horsehair-stuffed cushions were the norm.

After the Dark Ages, people could stop worrying if they were going to be raped and pilloried, with their houses burnt down, and they began to focus more on what was inside them. When standards of living began to improve, people’s thoughts turned to comfort. Cushions could be added to solid oak chairs to offer a little comfort, but there were no cushions on the backs of chairs.

In the Elizabethan era levels of comfort significantly increased.

To accommodate large Elizabethan skirts, the farthingale chair was introduced – a chair without arms with a piece of leather stretched across the back and nailed on each side. Upholstering materials included leather, brocade or embroidered cloth and velvet trimmed with a heavy fringe. Stuffing could be anything from sawdust, grass, feathers or deer, goat and horsehair.

Sofas still didn’t exist before this time; seats for more than one person were usually benches that could be pushed against the wall.

Actually, upholstery took a while to catch on; anything slightly comfortable was often disregarded and was felt to be too fem for the guys. Jacobean furniture was still similar to Elizabethan, with a few adjustments. Furniture was still made from oak, and blocky, because the carpenters were using carpentry tools to make it.

With Charles II on the English throne, the Puritan regime ended and the decorative arts began to flourish, which settlers brought to America. People were getting used to the comfort of upholstered furniture, and the first fully upholstered chair was built in 1705, referred to as a “sleeping chair,” where its occupant could rest his head on either the sides or the back.

Tapestry and fabric factories began to spring up in London and Paris, and the upholstery business began to boom.

Silk damask, wool moreen and elaborate embroidery were used increasingly more in upholstery. Cushions were made of horsehair with linen lining and down.

Upholstery would very much be integrated into the furniture-making process, and as comfort improved, the drop-in seat was invented. This meant that the seat could be upholstered in any fabric.

Louis XVI’s chairs were upholstered in pastel blues, pinks and yellows. Thomas Chippendale’s camelback sofas were some of the first to be completely upholstered, except for exposed legs.

Victorian opulence reigned supreme in the 19^th century. Two major innovations brought about modern upholstery. The first was the steam-powered engine, which provided cheap power to machine looms so that machine-woven fabrics could be mass produced. The second was the steel coil spring, which revolutionized seat cushions.

Bold Rococo Revival styles were popular, with shiny silks, leather and brocades that featured button tufting. Cornucopia-armed sofas often featured matching, upholstered round cushions on either end.

Styles from Mission to Art Deco and Mid Century Modern followed, each influencing upholstery preferences.

A major development was the invention of nylon as a durable alternative to silk, resistant to normal wear and tear that affected more traditional upholstery. Other inventions, from bent steel to fiberglass to molded foam cores, revolutionized furniture design and simultaneously brought about many of the modern designs in furniture upholstery we still see today.

Aren’t we all happy that today we don’t have to settle for a bare, hard oak bench for seating? And when we do, such as in church, it mercifully is only for as long as the service.

Bill Primavera is a residential and commercial realtor associated with William Raveis Realty as well as a publicist and journalist writing regularly as The Home Guru. For questions about home maintenance or to buy or sell a home, he can be e-mailed at williamjprimavera@gmail.com or called directly at 914-522-2076.