How can an inn's dining room furniture be designed for different sized species?

Question

In the fantasy world I am writing, I have several species, including my dozing bear farmers you may have already read of, but also much smaller, mouse-looking humanoids. These people are taller than real-world mouses, but are still struggling to reach an adult human's waist, especially younger ones who may only reach the knees.

I'm concerned that my little ones have some difficulty living among taller species, especially when wandering in cosmopolitan cities, where space may be lacking to store bulky, different pieces of furniture for them, and/or where wildly public differences in treatments between races is frowned upon. Mouse people can walk quite fast for their size, so they should have no issues regarding long distances. But height is much more of an issue, especially in order to access and use furniture, such as the ones when resting in a tavern.

Indeed, accessing chairs or tables is strenuous because you will need to climb up every time you want to sit, and climb down every time you finished what you wanted to do. I've got this part of the problem mostly sorted out, since mouse people are pretty adept at climbing (for most of them, at least), and I have devised several contraptions like chair's ladders to cheer a leader up to the top, and this while hiding it relatively well into a decoration style.

What bothers me more is how they use it once they are in place. Even though they have easy access to their seat, if they can only see the table's border when standing up, their happiness won't be standing really high, neither. Therefore, something must be made for these poor little ones!

So what highest-quality objects would you, clever furniture designers, invent for two species of different size?

Namely, pieces of furniture for a medieval-fantasy inn's dining room where you will have lunch and start your usual tavern brawls¹. Don't worry about bedrooms and bathrooms, I should be able to think something up once I have a nice and cozy approach. Usable technology can include most mechanical / physic components you can think of, excluding electricity and other (post-)industrial age energies as well as magic since that's a little overkill for this issue.

Here are some specific goals that must be achieved :

• It should be comfortable enough for the two sizes.
• People of different sizes should be able to stay together. You can have lunch with your human buddy if you want to.
• No one should need external help for most tasks, aside from specific ones you do anyway like asking for that salt cellar at the other side of the table.
• Proper hygiene prevents you from walking on where you eat, however, you can put your feet on where you would normally sit, and you can bend over the table like a kid trying to reach a far-away cookie pot, too.
• I'd rather have customers not be on the floor. I have already thought of Japanese kotatsus and cushions in an oriental fashion, so I'd like to see other ideas instead. If you think this condition cannot be fulfilled, well... Tell why and your idea then. It would be sad but I can understand!

And a little bonus is given if you can keep it relatively hidden, like for instance as decoration! You're not forced to hide it, but as I said, ostentatious differences in treatment would not be really well perceived by other races, so it would be nice if you could.

¹ : If you dare to make your pieces of furniture help in brawls, the innkeeper will be very sad, but it will be really fun.

Answer 1

Don't build up, build down.

The mouse people can use mouse sized chairs which are placed next to large but low tables. The Bears don't sit on the ground, instead you have in ground chairs / sofas.

Admittedly, this may be more expensive to set up and does not provide you with good tools for a brawl. But you may get mouse people thrown down the Bear Chairs.

Answer 2

Convertible furniture

Here are the seats that are spread around the table:

That's sized for the large animal to sit on comfortably. The base of the seat is low enough that the big animals thighs can fit comfortably under the table.

Back view:

If the small animal wishes to use the seat, they can climb the ladder.

The back of the seat rotates around the pictured dowel. It's back heavy (so doesn't fall and hit the big animals back), but when given a little push on the thing I painted purple (within the strength of a typical little animal):

The centre of balance crosses the centre of rotation and the chair back comes down. The small animal pushes from the centre, with the convenience hole to ensure they don't ruin their hairstyle. They climb up and take a seat:

A smaller animal can now sit with waist at table height, and because they have thinner bodies - much closer to the table.

The design actually has two small animal back rests - this is so that 2 small animals fill the space of one large one - so the a table of small animals don't have to sit so far away from each other.

The chair is now stable in the small animal configuration. Should a large animal later which to use the chair, they just need to lift the back up.

Answer 3

Use the walls.

https://www.catastrophicreations.com/getting-started-guide/designing-cat-wall/

Your mouse people face many of the same tribulations as cats. Cats live with large, uncautious humans and rambunctious dogs and kids. That is fine in small doses but not when it is time to eat, or sleep, or socialize in the cat manner with friend cats. Cats need a refuge and they can find it in the underused high spaces on walls.

So too your mice. Common rooms in the world have high ceilings because that helps with ventilation. The consequent high walls are underused by the large bear people for whom ladders seem risky; stairs are bad enough. The walls are the province of the mouse people. They will not be trodden upon or worse, fallen on by inebriated bear people. Everything is sized appropriately for them up there. Vertical transitions are fine and so the entire vertical space can be used as depicted in this cat wall. The bears trundle by beneath, mostly unnoticed.

Answer 4

Multi-Purpose furniture

You need furniture to handle customers of all sort of sizes and shapes. So you build it strong enough for the heaviest customer, and include features that allow it to be used by the smaller ones, to.

Example: A Tavern table with chairs for your Inn.

Chair: The big guy sits on the lower shelf, the midget sits on top. And has steps to make getting there easy! Feel free to include more than just the 2 levels. (Also note the convenient tail-hole, for customers with rearward appendages)

or

For the table itself, a simple, low sturdy wooden table. Low, so that small and medium-sized individuals can reach it comfortably.

"But that is too low for us BIG FOLK!", the Bear complains.

Well of course it is. That is why you serve the Big Folk's food and drink on a Bear-sized serving tray, which you put on top of the table in front of them.

You could of course makes separate, designated areas for each of the sizes. But that is uneconomical, and just downright RUDE. This is a Happy Place, where Big and Small (and medium) are all welcome to mingle!

Answer 5

Very high chairs

For humans, the problem of adults and children dining together is solved with high chairs and booster seats. In your case the sizes of dining guests are more diverse. The requirement that they should be able to sit together means that they have to share the same table, and we can play only with the seat height.

The tables in the tavern should accommodate the largest species. The seats would be adjustable. Medium sized guests would simply push their chair higher - but for the smallest guests extra large chairs would be too uncomfortable. They would need to put adequate sized boosters on top of big chairs. Several mouse-sized guests can sit side by side in their own boosters on top of one big chair.

Also, big chairs must be climbable for small guests.

Answer 6

Tables on tables.

Tables and chairs are human-sized. Bears are large enough to stand at the table at the same level as sitting humans. Here we see a grizzly bear beside a lawn chair. It's about the right height to have a conversation with a sitting human.

Later on the bear sits down and the head doesn't change height. So sitting on cushions is also an option.

Bears take up more space behind the table. Just use moveable tables in case you have more/fewer bears on any given day.

Small humanoids sit on top of the table at a smaller table and chairs set.

Case study: The Bee Movie.

Second Case study:

Answer 7

Make your human sized chairs with short arm rests that extend two thirds of the length of the seats and a back rest that has a hinge just above the arm rests ( with a locking pin on the side to keep the back rest upright when a human is sitting in it.

When a mouse person uses it, they pull up the pin and fold down the upper section so it rests on the arm rests forming a higher seat and can place their feet on the protruding last third of the human sized seat.

As for bar fights, if you leave an edge or handle to help flip the mouse seat back up to back rest position, an idiot trying to start a fight can slap a heavy hand down on this protrusion at the back of the mouse seat, flipping it up and launching the poor mouse into the air ...

Answer 8

Leather (from local animal skins) inflated trapped air chairs around a table/bar. Using a sprawling web of compressed air filled pipes and contraptions to inflate and deflate the durable and flexible material chairs. A heavier bear farmer would be comfortable in a fairly deflated chair while still being hygienically off of the floor. Mouse people could be given the height,support and equal status at full inflation to sit eye to eye with their companions, given free movement and access to tables without obstruction. Everyone takes a moment to get settled in these types of chairs.

I would suggest a valve to let air out, allowing a mouse to climb on at their height, close the valve and wait a short while for it to inflate to the desired height of their companions. And open a valve again to descend.

They would be more likely to survive tavern brawls and once deflated easy to pack away if needed. Depending on the type of tavern and whether brawls are encouraged pipes can be hidden or on decorative show.

Answer 9

Imagine a canvas director’s chair. A wooden X frame, two wooden armrests, and a canvas seat and back. Now, remove each wooden armrest and replace with a tiny director’s chair. Call this object a mouse-bear chair. A bear sits in the “director’s seat”, places their arms in the canvas “armrests”, and places their stuff on the floor. A mouse sits in the “armrests”, and places their stuff on the “director’s chair”. You have one object that either seats one bear or two mice (and their stuff). Let’s call this object a “mouse-bear chair”.

Now imagine a typical bar. A long slab of wood with a series of stools. But instead of stools, you have “mouse-bear chairs”. If you have a bar with three “mouse-bear chairs”, you can sit three bears, or six mice, or some combination (if the bears and mice are willing to share personal space).

Everyone eats off the same surface (the bar). Bears put their butts on the canvas “director’s seat”. Mice put their butts on the canvas “director’s armrests”. Anyone with a tail is free to wiggle that tail. Bears put their feet on the floor. Mice let their feet dangle, or might have special built-in footrests in posh places. Bears could use a “mouse-bear chair” like a fancy chair in a brawl. Mice would treat a “mouse-bear chair” as a huge heavy cafeteria bench in a brawl. Beware the mouse that could lift one of these things!

No feet touch the bar.

Noone has to sit on the floor.

Noone has to awkwardly ask for special help or equipment to eat their meal.

The only problem is if a bear doesn’t push their chair in after leaving the bar, and the next (mouse) customer has trouble either moving the mouse-bear chair or reaching the bar. This would be very poor form on the bear’s part. Rude!

Answer 10

how about extra wide armrests for the bigger population, that can serve as seating for the smaller ones. you could quite easily imagine some sort of small-person-backrest that folds away into the armrest when used by a big guy.

The small guys are gonna have issues moving their chairs once seated, but I think that's hard to avoid. some sort of sliding mechanism on the armrest could mitigate this somewhat, possibly adding wheels to something similar what a modern day drawer would have, if you don't think that's too advanced for your medieval setting.

Answer 11

So many answers! It was sooo hard to decide which one helped me the most. Still, thanks to all of them (thanks!), they oiled a few cogs in my brain and ideas started flowing in. So I thought people looking at this question behind me would like to see more concepts. Here are two more solutions with my drawings to show what it would look like, roughly.

The sit-in table

This solution is a table extension, working as a seat instead. One has to pull it out using sliders -or rotating hinges- in order to sit on it. Any small one can then reach it with the existing seat.

The design limits the table's legs location, but otherwise it can be really well hidden under or inside the table (as most extensions do), and a lock can be added to prevent the seat to slide back, pinching the legs of the unfortunate ones sitting on it.

The swing seat

This concept is based on swings like ones in gardens. Instead of having that annoying leg on the bottom, put a retractable one on the top! Then use a pulley system to rise or to lower the seat. Here, it is on the side for more clarity, but it could be incorporated on the chair with a wheel that could be turned, for instance.

The biggest issue is that it makes harder to move seats around, but on the positive side, it's easier to clean the floor. While it could seem so, climbing it isn't that hard if you put small holes like I did on the seat's front and with proper weight balancing.

Note from the bartender : Swinging chairs around the tavern can lead to injuries, and is therefore strictly forbidden. Also, you are not "the hero striking the evil lord" when you leap from a swinging chair and on other customers while in an inebriated state.