This article investigates the reciprocal influence of Ottoman Turkish and American interiors in the development of seating furniture. Seating furniture is unique because it involves a direct and physical interaction between the piece of furniture and the body, while at the same time it is part of a public space where social interactions occur. I will argue that the interactions between the Ottoman Turks and Americans are reflected in the way these traditions modified their seating furniture as they sought to mediate cultural, political and social differences between them. The concept of bodily comfort will serve as a common thread in understanding the origin of the expression "American style" (Amerikan stili or Amerikan tarzı) in modern Turkish language, the "Turkish chairs" in Victorian America in the late nineteenth century and the English language use of words such as sofa, ottoman and divan.

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This paper investigates the cultural influences between the East and the West (a contested set of geographic terms) through the boudoir and its furniture. The staple ingredient of the Rococo period (1723–1774), the pursuit of pleasure and happiness, produced spaces and furniture with an unprecedented attention to bodily comfort. In addition to Eastern‐inspired furniture pieces, such as the sopha, divan, lit à la Turque (Turkish bed), lit de repos à la Turque (Turkish bed of rest), canapé à la Turque (Turkish couch), veilleuse à la Turque (Turkish sofa), veilleuse à la Ottomanne (Ottoman sofa), and ottomanne (ottoman) to be used in a chamber à la Turque (Turkish room) or elsewhere, there was one space every modern eighteenth‐century upper‐class woman needed: the boudoir. The boudoir was an exclusive space for females, informed by the late eighteenth‐ and nineteenth‐century Western fascination with Orientalism. In spite of its so‐called cultural superiority, the West at times turned to the East and found fertile ground for working out questions of gender identity and power. Encapsulating the experience of colonialism, the boudoir became the site for the repression and reconciliation of gender roles and biases. Furthermore, the eighteenth‐century boudoir was a space where the modernization of interior space was underway due to the level of informality, personal privacy, and bodily comfort it afforded to its users.

The term public has a rather ambiguous and broad meaning so does public space. Considering “its full development as a product of modern capitalist society,”¹ public space is constructed alongside private space. Kost of points out the organizational and legal consequences of “explicitly defining and articulating an outdoor space for the common good” in that “the people assume a double responsibility: the upkeep of this space and its preservation as public property.”²As such, public spaces can serve as sites where public identity and meaning are negotiated in complex ways. Today, even in countries governed by western style democracy, the use and access to public spaces are often restricted and policed. Public spaces can be highly politicized when they become the setting for the glorification of leaders, social activism, political uprisings, conflict and violence. Since public spaces are one of many settings where citizens experience their city, what happens when public spaces are under attack? What if the memory and the meaning are transformed into fragmented and irrelevant pieces by business interests or the government? What happens to public life when public spaces are stripped off of their spaceness?

This article examines the impact on American furniture and clothing styles by women missionaries traveling to Turkey in the Victorian era. Although there has been much discussion of the impact of Western missionaries on Turkey and other parts of Asia, the reciprocal impact on American culture has not been adequately assessed. Missionary work, which started in the 1820s in a modest manner, turned into a systematic and large-scale activity, reaching its climax during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Unlike Western diplomats, whose visits took place in the palaces of Istanbul, far from the realities of everyday life, missionary women had informal contact with ordinary Turkish women. Ottoman Turkish domestic space was highly gendered, so only these missionary women would have had access to authentic Ottoman Turkish interiors and been able to observe them as social spaces. The furniture style and the unique concept of comfort that they observed in Turkey presented an alternative point of view of home life and its organization. After spending years abroad, these women would return to the US to recruit and raise money for their missions by traveling from community to community, often creating interest for their work abroad by presenting examples of material culture. This article will put letters, diaries, travelogues and other contemporary material in the context of American culture of the Victorian era in order to chart the unusual way in which American and Turkish women interacted with each other at this historical moment.