The daily life of the Greeks and Romans as illustrated in the classical collectionsMetropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)
History
The daily life of the Greeks and Romans as illustrated in the classical collections
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)
Art, Greek; Art, Roman; Greece -- Social life and customs; Rome -- Social life and customs
The Greek and Roman furniture which has come down to us is necessarily
small in amount and fragmentary because, like most modern furniture,
it was made of wood and consequently has been destroyed by damp. There
remain, however, some fairly complete pieces, and a considerable
number of metal fittings and casings, as well as some models and many
illustrations from vases. Among the objects from Cyprus in wall-cases
in the corridor are two bronze tripods, and three ornaments consisting
of goats’ feet and bulls’ heads from another. The bronze lions’ paws
were feet for a large chair or chest. We have also a little terracotta
chair with a diminutive figure in it and a three-legged table of the
kind used to set beside a dining-couch, both from Cyprus, as well as a
round table on three legs, of much later date (Case 2). Two lekythoi
in Case K in the Fourth Room, decorated with interior scenes, show
chairs of a very graceful and comfortable type, the Greek klismos, and
the same kind of chair is seen on the grave-monument of a lady in the
Sculpture Gallery (No. 4), and on a large amphora on a pedestal in the
Fifth Room (fig. 24). The lady playing a kithara in the wall-painting
in the Eighth Room is seated in a large armchair, the thronos. In Case
5 is a bronze casing of beautiful work for a piece of furniture, and in
Case 2 a bronze chair-leg and an ornament terminating in the head of a
young bullock. Two tripods and some bronze mountings from Cyprus will be
found in wall-cases in the corridor. In the cubiculum from Boscoreale is
a table of marble and bronze. The bronze rim which surrounds the marble
top is inlaid with silver and niello in a beautiful pattern of palmettes
and rosette ornaments. A couch, probably for dining (wrongly restored as
a seat), and a footstool stand in the corridor between the Eighth and
Ninth Rooms. Bedsteads, which were similar to this couch in shape, were
merely frames on which thongs were stretched, like the old-fashioned
corded beds, the interlaced leather bands acting as springs. The wooden
frames were frequently decorated with bronze fittings, and in the
Hellenistic and Roman periods inlay and mountings of silver, gold, ivory,
and tortoise-shell were employed for the rich. Couches and beds were
usually supplied with a raised head-rest, often finished with bronze
animal-heads, such as the mule-heads in Case A in the Seventh Room and
Case L in the Eighth Room.
[Illustration: FIG. 25. BRONZE CAULDRON]
[Illustration: FIG. 26. GREEK TABLE-WARE OF PAINTED TERRACOTTA]
Clothing was kept in chests, which were well adapted to the large
pieces of cloth composing a costume. A good illustration of a chest
may be seen in Case W in the Fourth Room, on an amphora decorated with
a scene from the story of Danaë and Perseus, and in Case 2 there is a
miniature chest of white stone from which the cover has been lost.
[Illustration: FIG. 27. BRONZE PATERA]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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