Series editors' preface - Wood Tools

8 Conservation of Furniture
motifs. For example the shallow geometric
carving that is found on much medieval furniture
is clearly taken from the stonemason’s
tradition.
In the early part of this period, furnituremaking
was a branch of carpentry. This was
because there was no demand, in England, for
a separate trade of cabinetmaker, because the
nature of house building and furnishing
allowed for the carpenter, and later the joiner,
to manage all the work required. Indeed, the
relation between the building and its furnishing
was often close. Some furniture was
dependent upon the wall and bedsteads were
often part of the wall. Other receptacles were
formed by building doors over recesses in the
wall thickness. The construction of chests,
stools and trestles all came within the remit of
the carpenter. Boards were pegged to each
other, and chests and boxes were bound with
iron bands to try to minimize the effects of
warping. Chests were sometimes made with
internal vertical stiles that formed feet as well
as a frame. Although uncommon, a crude
dovetail joint was known in chest construction.
Examples of chest construction are shown in
Figure 1.4.
Materials used
Timber dominated, the most common in use
being ash, elm and oak, with oak the most
popular. However, it was often the case that
the local material was the inevitable choice.
The forging of metal was a highly skilled
trade and the use of metal fittings occurred
from the first furniture in this period. Straps
were made for chests, to ensure that there was
as little movement as possible: these as well as
hinges, hasps and protective scrollwork, were
all worked in wrought iron. By the fourteenth
century, chests were often fitted with a lock,
the movement of which was sunk into the
woodwork. Strap hinges were used so that the
strap round a chest combined to make a hinge
in one piece. On cupboard doors, butterfly
hinges were common until the fifteenth century
when they were elongated to form a decorative
strap. Metals were occasionally used for
more than just fittings and examples of iron
furniture are known. Very rarely, silver, gold,
pewter and ivory were used to decorate important
pieces.
Tools and techniques
Perhaps one of the most important changes in
furniture-making in this period was that from
nailed and pegged board construction, to
framed-up construction. The reasons for these
constructional changes and the pace at which
they occurred are difficult to fathom, but three
separate theories have been proposed. First,
the desire for lighter, more easily moved furniture,
which introduced sawn timber and panels
rather than baulks and boards. Secondly,
the invention of the water-powered saw mill in
Germany in the early fourteenth century could
have made it easier to convert logs into thinner
panels and more manageable boards, especially
in comparison to the older methods of
two-handed pit sawing. Thirdly, there is an
obvious benefit in not having timbers that split.
Whatever the reason, the class of workmen
called joiners, from the end of the fifteenth
century, were encouraged to develop skills of
artistry only previously known to masons and
smiths. Panelling of ‘wainscot’ (quarter-sawn
oak) became popular for interiors once timber
conversion had become easier. This new-found
delight encouraged changes such as allowing
the wood members of bed-testers, posts and
headboards to be exposed rather than hidden
beneath cloth, and, more important, for ornament
to be produced from the wood itself,
rather than the painting or applied metal work.
The construction method still necessitated
mouldings to be worked in the solid and for
masons’ mitres (where joint and mitre do not
coincide) to be used. This was discontinued in
the sixteenth century when true mitres began
to be constructed. Frame and panel construction
is illustrated in Figure 2.29.
Surface decoration and finish
Carving was one of the most popular methods
of furniture decoration in the Gothic period.
Chip carving and piercing made it possible to
reproduce many of the designs (tracery and
roundels for example) that were based on
stonemasons’ work. The carving motif most
recognized is the linenfold design that was
used on wall panelling and furniture towards
the end of the fifteenth century.
Apart from these carving techniques, inlay or
intarsia, painting and gilding were also used to
decorate furniture. Painting was particularly
important during the period 1200–1500 and the