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a hot air balloon, so what?
Monday, 1 March 2010 04:42 pmSo, I went to all the lengths of using a Led Zepp quote for yesterday's subject line, getting thereby my knuckles rapped for undue "Stairway to Heaven" reference, and it turns out that actually I needn't have referred to bustles at all. I apparently not only spell a damned side better than the actual furniture dealers who sold us the bloody things, I also now know a lot more about Victorian chairs than they do. What we have are not bustle-back chairs, they're balloon-back chairs, as seen here. Clearly I rather fell for the shape of our balloon-back chairs because I am a hopeless pushover for all things Victorian. Also, I really like the way our new chairs follow the Victorian tendency to curve the back of a balloon chair, it's comfortable to sit on.
Bustle-back chairs are somewhat different, and in fact relate more logically to the bustle concept in that they have a padded back in two large curvy cushions (the original 18th-century bustle was effectively a pillow tied around the waist to sit just over the butt, for gods know what dubious aesthetic reasons). On a chair the effect is slightly less dubious, possibly on the same general principles of Victorian leg ruffles being less offensive on a piano than on a person, viz:
I am also pained to note that the horrifying tendency to refer to a balloon-back chair as a bustle-back chair is, by concentration of Google hits, something of a South African perversion. Except, on strict Language Log principles this isn't horrifying at all, but an instance of inevitable semantic drift, now with added geographical and cultural implication.
Extemporanea: bringing you a fine array of weird semantic analysis on obscure and useless subjects since 2005. Just think: if it wasn't for Google I couldn't inflict it on you. Actually I could, having a large and well-stocked university library practically on my doorstep, but I probably wouldn't.
Bustle-back chairs are somewhat different, and in fact relate more logically to the bustle concept in that they have a padded back in two large curvy cushions (the original 18th-century bustle was effectively a pillow tied around the waist to sit just over the butt, for gods know what dubious aesthetic reasons). On a chair the effect is slightly less dubious, possibly on the same general principles of Victorian leg ruffles being less offensive on a piano than on a person, viz:
I am also pained to note that the horrifying tendency to refer to a balloon-back chair as a bustle-back chair is, by concentration of Google hits, something of a South African perversion. Except, on strict Language Log principles this isn't horrifying at all, but an instance of inevitable semantic drift, now with added geographical and cultural implication.
Extemporanea: bringing you a fine array of weird semantic analysis on obscure and useless subjects since 2005. Just think: if it wasn't for Google I couldn't inflict it on you. Actually I could, having a large and well-stocked university library practically on my doorstep, but I probably wouldn't.
