Series editors' preface - Wood Tools

(Gill and Eastop, 2001). ‘Throwaway’, designed
by Landel for the manufacturer Zanotta in 1967,
was the first piece of upholstered furniture that
had no separate supporting frame (Sparke,
1986). Polyester urethane has largely replaced
polyether urethane since the 1960s in the production
of upholstered furniture, especially for
the production of foam backed fabrics.
Rubber
The rubber hydrocarbon is synthesized by a
wide range of plants, most of which are found
in wet tropical areas. Three important botanical
families cultivated for the product are the
Apocynaceae, Artocarpaceae and Euphorbiaceae.
The material was first introduced to
Europe in 1735 but was not much exploited
until the nineteenth century. The natural thermoplasticity
of rubber is overcome by a
process called vulcanization. Vulcanization, the
modification of rubber latex by sulphur and
heat, is used to improve the resilience and
strength of rubber and to produce a hard rubber
product by producing sulphide links
between rubber molecules (see Blank, 1989).
The process was discovered in 1839 by
Goodyear and patented in 1843 by Hancock
and in 1844 by Goodyear. In 1929 the Dunlop
Rubber Co. patented latex foam – ‘sponge rubber’.
Shortages caused by supply difficulties
during the Second World War increased
research, leading to synthetic latex developed
by Pirelli and others. The properties of rubber
are reviewed by Roff and Scott (1971).
Identification of polymer systems
Accurate identification of materials may help to
differentiate an early production of a furniture
model from a recent production. Plastics are
not easy to identify with certainty by visual
inspection alone and simple tests (e.g.
Mossman, 1988; Nuttgens, 1999) although useful
are not always completely reliable or may
require burning or heating of objects.
Techniques such as Fourier Transform Infra
Red spectroscopy (see Shearer, 1989) require
expensive equipment and trained staff.
However, more reliable and simplified tests are
being developed in response to the needs of
the plastics industries (Mucci, 1997). Further
information on the identification of these materials
is given in Chapter 4.
Upholstery materials and structures 113
3.2.5 Coated fabrics and ‘leather cloths’
Oil cloths
In Europe, from the fourteenth century, oil
cloths were made in imitation of leather and
came to be used for upholstery. The cloth was
made by applying coatings of a filling, typically
a paste of china clay or lithopone in thickened
linseed oil, to one side of a suitable cloth base,
typically unbleached, plain woven cotton or
linen. Several applications of these materials
would be required to produce the finished
cloth, which was allowed to dry at moderate
temperature between applications. The better
qualities of cloth were rubbed down between
coatings, dusted with chalk and calendared.
The results were variously known as American
cloth, wax cloth, toile cire and Lancaster cloth.
Rubber cloths
Textiles, commonly unbleached plain weave cottons
coated with rubber, were used to produce
inflatable cushions from 1813 and waterbeds
from 1832. The material was exploited for its
waterproof properties in clothing (e.g. the
Macintosh) and carriage work. However, it was
hard and inflexible during cold weather, soft and
sticky in hot weather – two disadvantages which
led to its being superseded, first by superior
forms of rubber and later by synthetic materials
such as those based on cellulose nitrate.
Cellulose nitrate
Introduced in the 1850s, most cellulose nitrate
imitation leathers are essentially combinations
of castor oil and cellulose nitrate with colouring
added (Thorp, 1990). Much in use until the
1950s for carriage work, prams and motor cars,
where waterproof or leather-like qualities were
Figure 3.7 An early example of textile trimmings from
a bed valance, English, c.1675