Now this one stopped Sylvie in her tracks. Found in Montpellier, this early 19th-century Spanish bench is an escaño, the high-backed bench that stood by the fireplace in traditional Spanish farmhouses. The back folds down on hidden hinges to become a table, made to do two jobs in a small kitchen. The family sat against the back to warm by the fire, and when it was time to eat the back came down and dinner was served on what had been a backrest. The form is most associated with Galicia in northwestern Spain, where the farmhouse kitchen was the room where everything happened: cooking, eating, working, sleeping when the rest of the house was too cold. Sylvie places it in an entryway with the back upright, ready to hold whoever sits down to take off their boots.
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