Cushion
Cushion (from
Old French coisson,
coussin; from
Latin culcita, a quilt), a soft bag of some ornamental material, stuffed with
wool, hair, feathers, or even
paper torn into fragments. It may be used for sitting or kneeling upon, or to soften the hardness or angularity of a chair or couch. It is a very ancient article of
furniture, the inventories of the contents of
palaces and great houses in the early
Middle Ages constantly making mention of it. It was then often of great size, covered with
leather, and firm enough to serve as a seat, but the steady tendency of all furniture has been to grow smaller. It was, indeed, used as a seat, at all events in
France and
Spain, at a very much later period, and in
Saint-Simon's time we find that at the Spanish court it was still regarded as a peculiarly honourable substitute for a chair. In France the right to kneel upon a cushion in church behind the king was jealously guarded and strictly regulated, as we may learn again from Saint-Simon. This type of cushion was called a
carreau or square. When seats were rude and hard the cushion may have been a necessity; it is now one of the minor luxuries of life.
The term cushion is given in architecture to the sides of the Ionic capital. It is also applied to an early and simple form of the Romanesque capitals of Germany and England, which consist of cubical masses, square at the top and rounded off at the four corners, so as to reduce the lower diameter to a circle of the same size as the shaft.