Furniture in the “middle Byzantine” era

Furniture in the middle ages was a rare thing for all the but the wealthiest classes, both in the East and the West.¹  For the wealthier people of Rômania, furniture came in two types. In palaces and affluent church establishments there were solid, immovable pieces - tables, benches and chairs and so on made of heavy timber. Very much more common was lighter furniture which was made to be folded up and put away to make limited space more flexible. Both these styles of furniture made extensive use of turned components.

When a household had more property that it needed to use on a daily basis, it obviously required storage. Chests like this are illustrated in manuscripts and referred to in literary sources. They could be covered with leather.² Multitudes of keys have been found all over the territory once ruled by Rome and Constantinople, and many locks. An example of a partiularly well preserved padlock was found in the Serçe Limani shipwreck. (Off site link)

Folding stools like this were in common use from early Roman era. Many have been found in archaeological sites, often made entirely of iron for compactness and ease of carriage. This example is based upon eleventh century manuscript pictures. For lighter exaples the seat was commonly made of cloth, just as today.3

This more elegant and comfortable type of folding chair was in use from the first century CE if not earlier, and continued to be illustrated into the eleventh century.4 As with x-stools, chairs of this type might also be made as solid items whilst retining the form of a folding item, as in the picture below.

This form of table is very commonly illustrated in tenth and eleventh century evangelist portraits.5

Beds are conspicuously absent from the domestic and monastic records collected by Oikonomidès (see note one), but they are depicted in manuscripts,⁶ and folding beds are listed in the imperial baggage of the mid-tenth century.⁷ The same was probably true of the royals and high aristocrats who went on hunting expeditions. This bed is a possible method for such camp beds. Once assembled, the tensioning of the cords holds the mortise and tennon joints tight.

Most people, including travellers, slept in bedding laid out upon sleeping platforms (see the domestic architecture page), or on the floor or the ground. This set of bedding is based upon travellers' bedrolls shown in an eleventh century manuscript,⁸ but this motif of triplets of stripes is the most common decoration illustrated on domestic and furnishing textiles throughout the “middle Byzantine” period.

Notes

1. For an example of domestic arrangements toward the lower end of the social scale in the Levant see the page on domestic architecture on this site. Fascinating detail is contained in Nicholas Oikonomidès, 'The contents of the Byzantine house: eleventh to fifteenth centuries', Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 44 (1990), pp. 205-214. For the paucity of furniture in Western medieval buildings see Eric Mercer, Furniture: 700-1700, New York, 1969, pp. 22-24. Back
2. The chests for the imperial baggage in the tenth century were covered in purple dyed leather and bound with polished iron straps: Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Three Treatises on Imperial Military Expeditions, John Haldon (ed. & tr.), Vienna 1990, pp. 106/107 and elsewhere. Back
3. Solomon and a prophet, Book of Job, Royal Collection, Copenhagen; St. John, National Library, Athens, codex 68, f. 1v. Back
4. Esphigmenou Monastery, Athos, codex 19, f. 47v. Back
5. Evangelist Matthew, gospel book, National Library, Athens; St Luke, British Museum, Add. 28815, f. 76v; Esphigmenou Monastery, Athos, codex 19, f. 47v. Back
6. Lot and family in flight: Kynegetua of Pseudo-Oppian, St Mark's Library Codex Gr. 479, f. 42r. Back
7. Three Treatises on Imperial Military Expeditions, pp. 106/107. Back
8. Pool of Betsheda, Monastery of Dionysiou, Mt Athos, codex 587m, f. 17v. Back