Furnishing Fabrics and the Decorative Arts

What does it mean to “furnish”? Today, the word tends to conjure up a more utilitarian meaning than decorate or ornament, while still implying a level of comfort or aesthetics above bare subsistence. This middle ground is rooted in the etymology of the word, which in the sixteenth century started to mean to provide what is “necessary, useful, or desirable;” indeed, at the start of the seventeenth century, William Shakespeare used the term variously to indicate the provision of both essentials and embellishments.

The multivalent meaning of furnish—or furnishing—applies well to textiles, which depending on their specific uses, may be classed as necessities, comforts, or luxuries. In particular, as a category of textiles, furnishing fabrics embody the range of “necessary, useful,or desirable” in both their material and aesthetic attributes. On the one hand, the material properties of furnishing fabrics can demarcate space, provide warmth, reflect or shade from light, and generally protect the human body; on the other hand, their design characteristics convey personal status, cultural mores, trade relationships, and contemporary ideals of taste and beauty. Although furnishing fabrics are destined to be used in conjunction with other forms of the decorative arts—for example, as the outermost covering of upholstered furniture that mediates between the frame and the human body or the draping on walls and windows that harmonizes with ornamental plaster or woodwork—they are also artifacts in their own.

In order to understand the combination of utility and aesthetics that lies at the heart of all decorative arts, it is important to consider what are often classified as “flat textiles” as three-dimensional objects. While the stuffing, shaping, and draping of their use enhance the dynamic quality of furnishing fabrics, even the subtle relationships of pattern and texture inherent in the textiles themselves are important indicators of how they were designed, made,and consumed. Decorative elements may be woven into the matrix of the textile, or in other cases applied as surface decoration through printing or the cutting of pile into a regular pattern; these choices also have an impact on the weight, opacity, drape, and wear of furnishing fabrics that determine how they have been used. While furnishing fabrics provide continuity between the different elements of both domestic and public interiors, they are also excellent individual case studies of the decorative arts.