In the nineteenth century in the whole of the lowland area there were
benches for seating at the table. In the corner by the wall there were two benches joined in the shape of an L, which enabled several persons to be seated at the table.
An older form of the bench was moveable and had no backrest. At the
end of the 19th century a bench with backrest appeared, richly ornamented.
By the bed they would regularly place a bench called obrtač or “inverter”,
which when the backrest was turned down, enabled the bed to
be widened. During the day it was used for sleeping, perhaps, and during
the night for children in a cradle to sleep on, or on the bench on
a pallet.
In richer houses there were wider benches with fine backrests
and armrests, which also were used as beds. In the Adriatic area, as well
as richly decorated benches with backrests, the form of bench with a
bottom part that had a chest for putting things away was common; two
wide boards shaped to form a backrest might be added.
Starting to be used at the same time was a chair with a backrest, variously
decorated by turning worked wood on which the initials of the
persons who would sit on them would sometimes by carved. The exact
family hierarchy could be expressed in the way the chairs were made. A
chair had a precisely set place in the arrangement of the furniture; it was
placed at the narrower end of the table. On it sat the gazda, goodman, or
the senior member of the extended family and it almost seemed to symbolise
his power inside the home. Such a chair on rare occasions might
be resigned to guests worthy of special attention; it was larger and more
decorated than the other chairs, and sometimes would be the only one at
the table. The inequality of men and women was reflected in the seats, the
subordination of women being highlighted. Women had chairs that were
much smaller, or perhaps they would sit on three-legged stools. A large
number of seats and folding tables meant that a lot of socialising was
going on, such as weddings and various celebrations and rural festivities.
Wedding feasts would be held in the autumn and winter and would take
place in the room. The beds and all the other furniture would be taken
out, and only a table with benches and chairs would be left in it. On
them, in a precisely determined hierarchy, sat the groom and those who
officiated in the wedding according to custom, and then any other guests.
On this occasion, as distinct from the everyday life, they did not eat
out of a common bowl. According to the accounts of Bogišić “in the Shtokavian people of
Žumberak, the bride doesn’t sit at table with the groom, unlike the
Chakavian speaking people of Žumberak, but stands in the corner by the table, and the groomsmen offer her meat and drink” (Bogišić 1974: 235). When the bride came into the house of the groom for the first time, the groomsman would help her dismount and bring her into the house, she would sit on a bench at the table. In 1859 Radić wrote that “the bride went around the table three times, and hung out towels and rings of fabric to place on the head when carrying loads, and when she had done, stood in the corner by the table” (Smičiklas 1968-70: 156).
From the 1970s on, the functions of room and table with benches and chairs as objects relating to socialising began to be increasingly restricted, in consequence of general social and economic trends in the population of the second half of the 20th century. Some of the changes took
place by the transformation of traditions that had been based on the values of the bygone pattern of life, or their failure to be maintained.
