Furniture Design Ideas

2 Routing the cove in the leaves 4 Outlining the profile of the top Enlarge the grid shown in the inset to produce a cutting pattern for shaping the profile of the top; one square equals 2 inches. Trace the pattern onto a piece of 14-inch plywood or hardboard and cut out the template on […]

Build the drawer for your Pembroke table as you would for a Queen Anne secretary, (page 116) using through dovetails to join the pieces. Use if-inch plywood for the drawer bottom. The Pembroke table drawer also gets a false front which is curved to match the shape of the end rail and drawer rails. To […]

MAKING THE SIDE RAILS 1 Marking the knuckle joints Assemble the knuckle joints, insert­ing lengths of /-inch dowel into the holes through the fingers, and cut the inner side rail pieces to length. For each side rail, spread glue on the contacting surfaces of the boards and clamp the outer rail pieces to the inner […]

The legs of a Pembroke table have a delicate look that belies their stur­diness. They are tapered, with a simple banded inlay around each leg about 3 inches from the bottom. The banding includes a %-inch-wide dark strip— in this case, walnut—which contrasts with the mahogany. A thin strip of maple frames the walnut. On […]

Drawer front and the fly rail is cut and assembled. Then, the short outer side rail piece is sawn to size and the stationary pieces are face-glued to the inner side rail. The assembly is then joined to the legs with blind mortise-and-tenons. Wooden cor­ner blocks are screwed to adjoining rails at the back end […]

The Pembroke table is thought to have originated in the mid – 18th Century, when Lady Pembroke commissioned the great Georgian cabinetmaker and master carver Thomas Chippendale to fashion a small casual table for her. The exam­ple featured in this chapter, howev­er, has more in common with the neoclassical designs of Sheraton and American Federal […]

QUEEN ANNE Named after British master carver and furniture designer Thomas Chippendale, this style emerged in the second half of the 18th Century. It is often thought of as Queen Anne dressed up with orna­mentation such as shell carvings, intricate fretwork, piecrust edging, and other elements of rococo or Chinese design. The style flour­ished in […]

I n material objects such as furniture, I believe beauty is born from pleasing pro­portion and the harmonious relationship between curved and straight lines. Straight lines impart structure, mass, and solidity. Curved lines lend movement, elegance, and grace. To me, Queen Anne-style furniture presents the perfect union of straight and curved components. Simple lines, graceful […]

A s a graduate student at the Winterthur Museum Program in Early American Culture, I was privileged to work with the country’s premiere collection of American furniture, including the best examples of the styles most popular with cabinetmakers today—Queen Anne and Chippendale. Even in this setting, though, I was always drawn to the neoclassical pieces […]

A deceptively well-engineered furniture style whose parts are assembled mainly from wooden sticks, Windsor represents one of history’s most innovative and recognizable furniture designs. The Windsor family of furniture consists of stools, chairs, cradles, stands, and tables. Chairs are the largest category with eight different basic forms, such as comb-backs, step-downs, and the sack-back version, […]