Ottoman

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Ottoman, 19th century, copy of the French 18th century ottoman

As a piece of furniture, an ottoman was originally a sofa-like , upholstered bench with semicircular armrests . The box ottoman with a folding seat and storage space underneath was known as a special form .

In the terminology of modern furniture , an ottoman is a sofa bed without a backrest (see chaise longue , Kline / Triclinium and Récamière ), or with a backrest that does not extend over the entire long side and also has no armrests at the free end.

Seating furniture in an American coffee shop chain in Munich with, on the right in the picture, a footstool suitable for sitting (eng .: "ottoman").

A conceptually false friend of the term is the ottoman in English usage common noun ottoman , which for the purposes of footstool an upholstered ottoman called, who also is suitable for sitting.

etymology

In connection with furniture, the use of the word derived from the French adjective ottoman (Ottoman) in the French language in 1729 for a day bed ( lit de repos en ottomane ) is documented.

shape

The shape of the ottoman has varied over the centuries and in the various Western European countries that have incorporated the word from the French language into their respective language usage.

In France, around 1780, the ottoman developed into a more or less wide sofa with an oval seat and a laterally rounded backrest, the ends of which are bent forward and serve as side rests. Rare specimens have a diagonal backrest and therefore sides of different heights. In France in the first half of the 19th century, the ottoman was a large oval seat with a base, generally without a backrest and only sometimes with one. The word archaic in common usage there stands in a technical context for the above-described antique sofa from the 18th century with a rounded back, or its copy.

Web links

Wiktionary: Ottoman  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Footnotes

  1. ^ Ian Cameron, Elisabeth Kingsley-Rowe (ed.): The Great Antiques Lexicon . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1976, ISBN 3-88379-006-0 , p. 255 (The English original edition was published under the title Collins Enzyclopedia of Antiques by Collins, London and Glasgow 1973.)
  2. ↑ Inventaire gén. des meubles de la Couronne (1729), quoted by Henri Havard, Marius Vachon: Dictionnaire de l'ameublement et de la décoration , 1890, May & Motteroz, Paris
  3. ^ Dictionnaire Le Petit Robert , 1976, Ed. SNL, Paris
  4. ↑ Trésor de la Langue Française online