What is Fine Furniture?What is Fine Furniture?
What makes an item of fine furniture “fine”? The level of workmanship? The style? Joinery techniques? Products? Some would certainly argue, as an example, that plywood has no place in fine furnishings making. The plywood problem, in fact, began an extensive conversation on the Woodworking.com Forum recently. Not as well surprisingly, the original solid-wood-versus-plywood concern – while inspiring a number of interesting examples involving hotdog active ingredients, to name a few points – took a back seat to an extra global conversation of what makes up high quality in a furniture piece. The general agreement seemed to be that woodworking ends up being “fine” when it surpasses the everyday on a number of fronts. One contributor summed it up this way:
” I think “great” furniture has characteristics to it that established it apart from – not-so “great”.
Joinery is one quality. Dovetails especially if hand cut and to spaced so regarding look machine cut, Mortise and also Tenon joinery and the other joinery of like fashion are characteristics of “great”.
Surfaces to me are one more particular. Fine finishes are layered rubbed and also brightened.
Creative appeal – is an additional factor. “Great” to me makes a declaration – curves that are “faired” and also well proportioned make a statement. Emphasizes of contrasting shades and also products.
Material selection as well as grain patterns and also shades make “fine”.
I would check out “great” as a piece being thoroughly thought out and also composed with all of the above brought into factor to consider.”
Sounds sensible, and at the same time, it throws light on an interesting attribute of the argument. Discussions about what’s “great” and also what isn’t, it appears, can not assist yet obtain entangled up in the tendency to consider typical products and workmanship and also “improvement” as the exact same thing. There’s possibly absolutely nothing all that incorrect with really feeling by doing this, and most of us appear to, to some degree. Yet it does provide a person time out to question whether there’s anything that makes a hand cut dovetail “finer” than syncs cut with a router and also dovetail jig other than the fact that they all made use of to be done this way.
It’s fascinating, also, that conventional materials are still kept in such reverence. A lot of the discussion participants seemed to concur: One of the most likely reason 18th century craftsman never ever made use of MDF is that they really did not have any. However there’s still a lot of support for the concept that furniture constructed from 100 percent strong wood is simply flat-out much better than furnishings made using any kind of type of produced sheet material. Today, most woodworkers are quick to detail the advantages– moral as well as or else – of using synthetic substrates as well as veneer as opposed to solid timber. Still, lots of would have to confess that they steer clear of from it out of a feeling that there’s something suspect about using materials in the particleboard family members.
There’s nothing wrong with making use of typical approaches strictly out of a love of doing things by doing this, certainly. This is just something to chew on. A few of the old means are certainly the most effective methods. Others will certainly befall of favor as modern-day products and also faster techniques get regard. And afterwards, as more than one forum participant mentioned, what matters as “great” will certainly have to be redefined.