Furniture Design Ideas

Upholstered furniture has been around since ancient Egypt, with seat pans made from vari­ous grasses. During the Renaissance, leather and velvet were applied to furniture. In 1620, the English Upholsterer’s Company was granted a charter. It is one of the oldest of the London guilds and liveries companies. Traditional notions of upholstered furniture include pieces […]

Hardware includes square, star, flat-head, and Phillips tip drivers and stainless steel, brass, or wall – board screws (Figure 8.44). Hardware also includes bolts, nuts, washers, pulls, full extension glides, casters, special cabinet hinges, or plated continu­ous hinges. Modez clips are useful in mounting panels and heavy objects to a vertical surface. Similar to the […]

The way materials, hardware, and components come together is key to creating great furni­ture. The expressed joint is the beginning of ornament (Figure 8.15). At a utilitarian level, the joint must be strong enough to resist the forces placed on it. This is especially important because the joint is often the weakest point of a […]

In the production of furniture, significant shop space is required for assembling and gluing pieces together. Clean, flat, work surfaces are needed to glue and clamp material together. Assembling furniture is a complex process that needs to be planned carefully. In addition to needing a lot of space, this phase requires a significant amount of […]

There are rules of thumb worth considering when working with hand and power tools in a shop envi­ronment. The first and foremost priority is to learn how to use power saws properly and safely. Learn how to hold, cut, and shape wood, metal, or plastic in a safe and proper manner. Listen to the sound […]

Bending wood is traditionally achieved through a process of steaming wood in a contained chamber. After the cells have been saturated with moisture, enabling the wood to flex, the wood is then bent to shape or pressed into shape using a two-piece form. Samuel Gragg (1772-1855) made a series of furnishing using this process. He […]

Supplies, and hardware Consider the quality, grade, and availability of all materials needed to fabricate furniture as well as the width, length, thickness, and finished surface qualities of the materials as they are distributed. This process determines the necessary cuts and the yields of the materials needed. For example, % inch (1.9 cm)-thick medium-density fiberboard […]

TAKEOFF LIST Shop drawings are essential documents that delineate the parameters and expectations for the final product (Figure 8.2). They can be drafted by hand or executed on the computer and serve as a transitional phase between design and fabrication. Usually plotted or drafted at full scale, shop drawings delineate exactly how something will be […]

We should make things as simple as possible but not simpler.1 Albert Einstein In this book, workmanship refers to the quality apparent in the fabrication of furniture. Distinctions have been drawn between the workmanship of risk (handcraft) and the work­manship of certainty (machine and digital fabrication), but in every case, making furniture involves skills and […]