Who’s right–the people who –The people who say “couch” or those who say “sofa”? What were wing chairs originally meant to be used for, and how can you send moths winging in the other direction without using formaldehyde balls?
Accuracy, history and good sense often slip through the cracks in trying to understand our homes and their contents.
To fill those little fissures and set the record straight, we put together this quiz. Take it and see how your home sense stacks up.
1. What were the original Barcelona chairs, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, upholstered in?
a. Black leather
b. White kid leather
c. Brown suede
d. Lizard skin
2. What is an antimacassar? (pronounced Auntie ma-Ca-ser)
a. A 19th Century doily used to protect chairbacks from dirt and oily hair.
b. A pump used in salt water aquariums
c. A fluid that can be added to a home’s water supply to klll bacteria
d. A white cloth draped across windows in Indonesia to block the Macassar winds
3. Where did the term “bungalows originate?
a. England
b. Indla
c. Chicago
d. California
4. Everybody knows that mothballs and cedar take care of a moth problem. What else works?
a. A sprig of eucalptus
b. Asprig of dried rosemary
c. Menthol cough lozenged
d. Several dead moths pinned onto a poster board
5. Who originally said “God is in the details”?
a. Martha Stewart
b. Frank Lloyd Wright
c. St. Augustine
d. Mies van Rohe
6. Strictly speaking, what is the difference between a sofa and a couch?
a. Interior designers say “sofa”; normal people say “couch.”
b. A sofa has a back and two arms. A couch is akin to a daybed, with one side that props up the head and a back that tapers in height as it extends about halfway toward the foot.
c. A sofa has a heavy-duty spring construction; a couch has a lesser-quality construction.
d. A sofa has an undivided back; a couch has a multiple-cushion back.
7. How was a gargoyle originally used?
a. As a gravesite marker
b. As an address system; Instead of numbers, medieval homes were marked with distinguishing grotesque figures
c. As a planter
d. As a rain spout
8. Why did the Shakers hang their chairs from peg racks on the walls?
a. They didn’t. Today’s furniture stores and catalogs show Shaker chairs hanging from walls to get you to buy the peg racks, too.
b. To test the lightness and durability of the chair
c. To clear the floor for sweeping
d. Shaker homes had only one room, so they moved the chairs off the floor and the tables to the sides of the room every night to make way for their roll-up sleeping mats.
9. What is a beaufait?
a. An early spelling of “buffet,” the dining room dresser
b. A Victorian ice cream concoction, meant to entice male beaus
c. An Art Nouveau-style candelabra
d. A French tapestry
10. What most easily distinguishes American cherry wood from mahogany?
a. Cherry has a dark red color; mahogany is more of a brown red.
b. Mahogany has the dark red color; cherry is more brown red.
c. Cherry has a less noticeable grain, marked by the occasional dark streak; mahogany has a bolder and more varied grain pattern that can include curls, stripes and mottling.
d. Knock on the two woods. The mahogany will sound baritone compared to cherry’s more soprano sound.
11. The ordinary house mouse . . .
a. feeds 15 to 20 times per day
b. can squeeze through a hole that is just 1/4-inch wide
c. can start breeding at 2 months old and have litters of 4 to 7 young every 40 to 50 days
d. All of the above
12. Before moving to High Point, N.C., where were the major retail furniture shows held in this country?
a. New York
b. Chicago
c. Flint, Mich.
d. Los Angeles
13. What is shagreen?
a. A watery shade of green
b. A boxy lampshade that flares slightly
c. A specially treated rice paper used to make shoji screens
d. Fish skin used as a veneer to cover furniture and accessories
14. What is a torchere?
a. A stand for candles or lamps, developed from a Gothic flaming torch
b. A 19th Century New England lantern
c. A long, rag-wrapped stick used to light hearth fires in 17th Century European homes
d. The technical name for what most people call lightning bugs
15. Who or what is YaYaHo?
a. The Japanese-born inventor of the compact disc player
b. New York’s newest trendy art district-the land beyond SoHo
c. The first cable lighting system
d. An experimental, integrated community outside of Philadelphia, which mandates a carefully planned ethnic mix of residents
16. What is the difference between the American terms “dresser” and “bureau”?
a. Both are low chests of drawers; the term “dresser” is reserved for chests used only in bedrooms.
b. There is no difference; the terms can be used interchangeably.
c. A bureau is a desk; a dresser is a low chest of drawers.
d. A dresser has no defined legs; it sits flush to the floor. A bureau has legs.
17. Most people refer to all wall-mounted lighting fixtures as “sconces,” but what is the correct definition of the term?
a. A dry British biscuit
b. A wall-mounted lighting fixture made from solid wood and often intricately carved
c. A bracket or shelf attached to a wall for holding candles or lamps
d. A chandelier, which, of course, hangs from the ceiling
18. Which of the phrases below is an oxymoron?
a. Antique coffee table
b. Wicker chair made of rattan
c. Shaker machinery
d. Gilded silver
19. What was the relationship between American designers Charles and Ray Eames, who were prominent during the 1950s and ’60s?
a. Husband and wife
b. Father and son
c. Son and father
d. Brothers
20. Huntboards were long, narrow tables (circa late 18th and early 19th Centuries) that were used to serve food and drink. Why are they taller than the average table?
a. So the big, husky hunting dogs could be stashed underneath while their masters ate
b. So the hunters could stand and eat their food
c. Because hot air rises; food atop the tall huntboards remained warmer than at regular table level.
d. No one really knows why huntboards have tall legs.
21. What is French-born architect/designer Philippe Starck, best known for his furniture and housewares for chichi Italian companies like Driade and Alessi, up to these days?
a. Designing mail-order homes for a French catalog
b. Building himself a mail-order home
c. Redoing a hotel in trendy South Beach, Fla.
d. All of the above
22. What or who initially inspired 20th Century architect Marcel Breuer to make chairs out of tubular steel?
a. Abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky
b. The Bauhaus school of architecture and applied arts in Germany
c. The German baton
d. The bicycle
23. Where, when and why did the wing chair originate?
a. In Colonial America; circa 1700; the wings represented Americans’ flight to freedom.
b. In Britain; circa late 17th Century; the high back and winged sides shielded the sitter from drafts.
c. In China; circa 1400; the wings represented the butterfly, a prevalent decorative form during the Ming dynasty.
d. In France; circa early 19th Century; a vain Napolean Bonaparte demanded an elaborate, high-back chair that would serve almost like a picture frame around his body, thus giving dignity to his short stature.
24. According to the principles of feng shui, the ancient Chinese philosophy that melds nature and design, what does a door facing to the east signify?
a. A good family life
b. Wealth
c. Fame
d. Happiness to all but one family member
25. How did rustic, woodsy Adirondack furniture get its name?
a. It was made by craftsmen in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York.
b. It was popular among homeowners in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York.
c. The wood was grown in the Adirondack Mountains.
d. The wood was actually grown in Canada, but cured in Adirondack Mountain towns.
ANSWERS AND SCORING
The following tells you how to determine your score on the quiz:
20 to 25 correct answers: Either you’re a trivia buff or you’re spending far too much time in, on and around your home. Our advice: Get out more.
15 to 19 correct answers: Admit it. You really knew about half those; you guessed the rest.
10 to 14 correct answers: You know as much as the next guy.
Fewer than 10 correct answers: Well, you tried.
The answers
1. What were the original Barcelona chairs, designed by Mies van der Rohe, upholstered in?
d. Mies covered those steel chairs, which were designed for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona as seats for royalty to rest in should they fatigue at the fair, in white kid leather. The Knoll Group, which owns the license to reproduce the design, has never since permitted the Barcelona chair to be covered in kid leather, which it calls a “sybaritic excess.”
2. What is an antimacassar (pronounced Auntie ma-CA-ser)?
a. Antimacassars, or doilies, were needed in 19th Century homes to protect chairs, because people then dressed their hair with macassar oil.
3. Where did the term “bungalows” originate?
b. India is the birthplace of “bungalow.” Banglas, low houses with verandas, took their name from the Indian province of Bangla, now Bangladesh. The British in Bangla combined the bangla style with English cottages and ended up with what we now know as bungalows.
4. Everybody knows that mothballs and cedar take care of a moth problem. What else works?
b. Dried rosemary also works to repel moths, according to the book “Chic Simple: Home” (Alfred A. Knopf, $25) by Kim Johnson Gross, Jeff Stone and Julie Iovine.
5. Who originally said “God is in the details”?
d. St. Augustine said it first. Mies made the line famous. Martha Stewart and Frank Lloyd Wright are known for their devotion to the idea.
6. Strictly speaking, what is the difference between a sofa and a couch?
b. Although the two words are acceptably interchanged these days, there is a historical difference between the two furniture forms. The sofa was developed in the mid-18th Century as a more comfortable alternative to the settee and was bolstered by the invention of coil spring construction techniques. The modern couch (derived from the French word coucher, which means “to go to bed”) emerged in the 17th Century as a modest alternative to elaborate medieval and Renaissance beds of estate.
7. How was a gargoyle originally used?
d. According to the folks at Arlington Heights-based Design Toscano, which reproduces and sells a multitude of gargoyles, these sculptures were originally used as downspouts to direct rainwater from the masonry of medieval cathedrals. Wildly imaginative Gothic minds transformed something so mundane into fantastic grotesque figures, which were said to ward off evil spirits. The name “gargoyle” comes from the sound of the gurgling water running through the sculptures.
8. Why did the Shakers hang their chairs from peg racks on the walls?
c. The Shakers were meticulously neat and believed in the miss-no-crumb method of sweeping. One of their mottos: “Clean your rooms well; for good spirits will not live where there is dirt. There is no dirt in heaven.”
9. What is a beaufait?
a. A beaufait is a buffet-it’s just an earlier spelling.
10. What most easily distinguishes American cherry wood from mahogany?
c. The graining pattern is the most telltale distinction between cherry and mahogany, according to the Hardwood Manufacturers Association-although it is true that cherry has a dark red color, mahogany more of a brown red.
11. The ordinary house mouse . . .
d. does all these things. The “Orkin Pest Indentification Guide” provides the bad news about the hungry, agile and prolific house mouse.
12. Before moving to High Point, N.C., where were the major retail furniture shows held in this country?
b. Chicago was the center of the retail furniture world from the 1930s to the 1960s, when the major manufacturers and wholesale shows (or markets, as they’re called) moved to North Carolina. Weather was a primary reason for the big move. The Chicago markets were held in what are perhaps two of this city’s most undesirable months: January and July.
13. What is shagreen?
d. Shagreen, which is the skin on a dogfish or shark, was used as a decorative veneer by 18th Century French craftsmen. It made a comeback in the early 20th Century and even was used on furniture.
14. What is a torchere?
a. A torchere is a stand for lighting and can be traced in a variety of forms (columns, candelabra) from the early Renaissance on through history. In this century, the term torchere also has been applied to a floor lamp with a reflector bowl and no shade, casting indirect (mood) light upward. The correct spelling for the floor lamp is actually torchier or torchiere.
15. Who or what is YaYaHo?
c. YaYaHo is the name of the first cable lighting system, which suspends small halogen light sources from exposed low-voltage cables. It was developed by German lighting designer Ingo Maurer in the early 1980s and introduced at the Euroluce lighting fair in Milan in 1984.
16. What is the difference between the American terms “dresser” and “bureau”?
b. A bureau and a dresser are the same animal-in American terminology. In European contexts, a dresser is something like a buffet. A bureau is a desk-and-drawers combination piece; Americans know it as the secretary.
17. Most people refer to all wall-mounted lighting fixtures as “sconces,” but what is the correct definition of the term?
c. A sconce is really a shelf.
18. Which of the phrases below is an oxymoron?
a. There is no historical precedent for the coffee table. It is a 20th Century form designed to complement modern low chairs and sofas.
19. What was the relationship between American designers Charles and Ray Eames, who were prominent during the 1950s and ’60s?
a. Charles and Ray Eames were husband and wife.
20. Huntboards were long, narrow tables (circa late 18th and early 19th Centuries) that were used to serve food and drink. Why are they taller than the average table?
b. Huntboards were designed to be taller than the average table so they could accommodate a standing eater. Hunters, who had just spent the day on horseback, preferred to stretch their legs through mealtime.
21. What is French-born architect/designer Philippe Starck, best known for his furniture and housewares for chichi Italian companies like Driade and Alessi, up to these days?
d. Philippe Starck is doing it all. The hotel project links him up, once again, with New York entrepreneur Ian Shrager, the money man behind Starck’s whacky rehab of the Paramount and Royalton hotels in New York.
22. What or who initially inspired 20th Century architect Marcel Breuer to make chairs out of tubular steel?
d. Upon buying his first bicycle, Breuer marveled that it must be a good product because the design had not changed in 30 years. An architect friend told him of the bicycle’s steel tubes, which could be bent “like macaroni.” Breuer was inspired. But he was also afraid of criticism and, thus, kept his tubular chairs under wraps until painter Wassily Kandinsky saw them in Breuer’s private studio and was intrigued. Breuer’s “Wassily” chair is named for Kandinsky.
23. Where, when and why did the wing chair originate?
b. The wing chair did originate in Britain in the late 17th Century to shield sitters from drafts; it remains a popular form today in England and the U.S.
24. According to the principles of feng shui, the ancient Chinese philosophy that melds nature and design, what does a door facing to the east signify?
a. According to Sarah Rossbach in her book “Feng Shui: The Chinese Art of Placement” (Penguin Group, $11), an east-facing door means good family life. A north-facing door brings good business; to the south, fame; and facing west, fame for offspring.
25. How did rustic, woodsy Adirondack furniture get its name?
b. Made primarily in Indiana from the late 1890s to the 1940s, Adirondack furniture was so named because of its popularity among the homeowners and decorators of summer residences in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York.
