Folding Stool Or Chair

See Faldstool and X-shape Chair.

Foliated

In leaf-shape design.

Foot

A foot is frequently found as a termination to the leg of a table, chair, etc. It may assume many shapes, from a simple turned knob to an elaborately carved representation of an animal or other living thing. Many of the designs for feet are of Egyptian, Assyrian and Chinese origin, and reached England through one or other of the European countries. In Elizabethan and early Jacobean furniture feet were not usual, but afterwards they became very popular and remained so till well on in the Chippendale period, when they were less used. Some of the best known feet are here mentioned : Animal Couchant, Bear's Paw, Ball, Ball and Claw, Block or Cube, Bracket, Braganza Toe or Spanish Foot, Bun, Chinese, Claw or Talon and Ball, Club or Dutch, Cube, Dolphin's Head, Dragon's Claw, French Scroll, Goat's Foot, Hoof, Inverted Cup, Leaf, Lion's Paw, Melon, Onion, Pad, Pied de Biche, Scroll, Slipper, Spade, Talon and Ball, Turned, Therm, Taper, Web Voluted, Vase Shape.

Footman

A polished steel stand, about a foot in height, with shaped legs, and a top of open-work bars, used in front of the fire to keep plates hot. It was in favour during the hob-grate period, when the fire was raised well above the hearth. The modern grate is too low for its effective use.

Footstool

When chairs were made high to increase the dignity of those using them, footstools were necessary, and accordingly in Elizabethan and Jacobean times they were the usual accompaniment of a chair; but afterwards when chairs were made to take the place of stools and benches, the footstool became an article of luxury rather than necessity.

Foot-Warmer

A small, square, wooden box with perforated top and sides. In a movable metal container were placed hot cinders which radiated their warmth. It was used down to the eighteenth century as a footstool, chiefly by ladies, and was for long a familiar domestic object in Holland and Italy; the Dutch women even carried it to church in winter. Foot-warmers, or foot-stoves as they were sometimes called, were often elaborately carved.

Form

A long seat or bench without a back in common use in Jacobean times before single chairs became common.

Forty-Wink Chair

See Wing Chair.

Four-Post Bedstead

Under this general term bedsteads are sometimes included which have two posts in front and a carved panelled backboard or a framework on the back and a tester on which hangings are draped. In Elizabethan times the bedsteads were very heavy in construction and highly ornamented with carving, but by the end of the seventeenth century they had become lighter and more graceful, and the tester consisted of a cornice only of sufficient strength to sustain the curtains. In the time of Queen Anne the posts were lengthened to a remarkable extent, thus raising the tester to some sixteen or seventeen feet in height.

Frame

A case or structure for the protection and enrichment of drawings, paintings, mirrors, etc. Frames were first made in Italy in the sixteenth century, and came into general use in England towards the end of the seventeenth. At first they were carved - and in England there are no equals to the carved frames of Grinling Gibbons. Afterwards they were made to suit the style of furniture then in vogue. About the middle of the eighteenth century "Compo" was first used in making them.