Consumer Confidence My Other Sofa Is a Bookcase The growing
appeal of furniture that does more than one thing.   Have you
noticed how ambitious furniture has gotten these days? An easy
chair that is simply content to be a place to sit is taking the
easy way out — why shouldn’t it also be a table? Bookshelves are
reinventing themselves as couches; prim, buttoned-up benches
lead secret lives as voluptuous sofas. The Calypso Chair, a
contraption more functional than a medical exam table, can be
configured in so many different ways it should probably come
with its own on-board help system.  Such aggressive utility is
not unprecedented. In 1866, an Ohio man named Charles Hess
obtained a patent for a piano, that along with all the standard
piano parts, also contained a trundle bed, two closets, a four-
drawer bureau, a writing desk, and a sewing area. In 1927, a
pair of cousins, Edward M. Knabusch and Edwin J. Shoemaker,
founded the Floral City Furniture Company and began producing
The Gossiper, a telephone stand wi