An ottoman is a piece of furniture. Generally ottomans have neither backs nor arms. They may be an upholstered low couch or a smaller cushioned seat used as a table, stool or

footstool A footstool (foot stool, footrest, foot rest) is a piece of furniture or a support used to elevate the foot. There are two main types of footstool, which can be loosely categorized into those designed for comfort and those designed for func ...

. The seat may have hinges and form a lid for the inside hollow, which can be used for storage of linen, magazines or other items, making it a form of storage furniture. The smaller version is usually placed near to an armchair or

sofa A couch, also known as a sofa, settee, or chesterfield, is a cushioned item of furniture for seating multiple people (although it is not uncommon for a single person to use a couch alone). It is commonly found in the form of a bench with up ...

as part of living room decor or may be used as a fireside seat. Ottoman footstools are often sold as coordinating furniture with armchairs, sofas or gliders. Other names for this piece of furniture include footstool,

tuffet A tuffet is a small grassy mound or clump of grass; or alternatively a low seat. The word is now known overwhelmingly from the nursery rhyme "Little Miss Muffet" which was first printed in 1805. It was originally a variant of the word " tuft" ...

, hassock, pouf (sometimes spelled pouffe), in Shropshire, England the old dialect word tumpty may be used, or in New Zealand and Newfoundland a humpty.

History

The ottoman traces its roots to furnishing practices in the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...

, where it was the central piece of residential seating, generally designed as a low wooden platform intended to be piled with cushions. It was first designed as sectional furniture that wrapped around three walls of a room, before evolving into smaller versions that fit into the corner of a room or circular padded seats surrounding a column or pole in a public room. The ottoman was eventually brought to Europe from the Ottoman Empire in the late 18th century and named after its place of origin. The earliest known instance of the use of the name is ''ottoman''e in French in 1729, and in the course of a generation it made its way into every

boudoir A boudoir (; ) is a woman's private sitting room or salon in a furnished residence, usually between the dining room and the bedroom, but can also refer to a woman's private bedroom. The term derives from the French verb ''bouder'' (to sulk ...

, but it appears originally to have been much larger than at present. The first known recorded use in English occurs in one of

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...

's memorandum books from 1789: "P i. for an Ottomane of velours d'Utrecht."Oxford English Dictionary, s.v.
ottoman
, accessed 6 March 2013. Over time, European ottomans took on a circular or octagonal shape through the 19th century, with seating divided in the center by arms or by a central, padded column that might hold a plant or statue. The ottoman began to have hinged seats to make use of the empty space inside which can be used to store items. The ottoman footstool, a closely allied piece of furniture, was an upholstered footstool on four legs, which could also be used as a fireside seat, the seat covered with carpet, embroidery or beadwork. By the 20th century the word ottoman had come to encompass both forms.

References

External links

* * Furniture Couches Chairs Benches (furniture) Upholstery {{furniture-stub