Series editors' preface - Wood Tools

38 Conservation of Furniture
Wood-based For much of the century traditional
furniture woods have been used with little
change. Oak, mahogany and walnut have
been used to make reproduction furniture of
varying quality. Other traditional woods have
been used in the making of modern furniture.
The design phases of sapele mahogany,
makore, rio rosewood, American walnut and
pine are all testimony to the longevity of taste
for particular species. The major twentieth-century
timbers that were apparently new to furniture
were teak and afromosia. Although
previously used in boat-building and furnituremaking,
these woods were reintroduced to
European furniture via Scandinavia.
The century is best known for its technical
advances in the treatment of wood. Whether it
be improvements in seasoning, veneer-cutting,
laminations and plywood, or reconstituted
wood materials such as block-board or particle
board, the advances were highly important. The
developments in manmade boards began with
plywood, prepared in sheet form for use as a
constructional material in the early part of the
century. Its value as a panel board was soon
acknowledged. The use of plywood as a
‘designer material’ was developed especially by
Alvar Aalto in 1930–1. He then worked on laminated
plies in 1936, producing some of the
twentieth century’s most famous chairs. Other
examples of plywood work include Gerald
Summers, Marcel Breuer and the Isokon company
(Figure 1.26). Although successfully used
in much inexpensive production furniture, the
three-dimensional chair forms made from plywood
by Charles Eames in the 1940s are
amongst the most famous results obtained using
this material. Plywood was further developed by
other designers such as Arne Jacobsen in his Ant
chair (1952) and it continues to be a valuable
material. Hardboard or Masonite was a later
invention which involved pressing a mixture of
wood fibres and adhesives into sheets. It has
been used for back panels of cabinets and for
packing. Block board and laminboard are two
further developments of nineteenth century cabinetmaking
techniques that were taken over by
timber merchants and made and marketed as
constructional panels. However, the most
important product in the second half of the century
was particle board or chipboard. This
board, developed during the Second World
War, comprises wood chips of varying shapes
Figure 1.26 Isokon Long Chair, beech, bent laminated
frame, padded plywood seat. Designed by Marcel
Breuer (1902–81), made in England, 1936
with adhesives and fillers which are bonded
under great pressure. The board thus produced
is extremely strong and flat with no natural
faults, making it ideal for the box-like designs of
the later twentieth century. This process was
developed to use other materials such as flax
residues (flax-board) and sugar cane residues
(bagasse board). One of the latest innovations is
medium density fibreboard (MDF), which is
made from wood fibres bonded together with a
resin to make a variety of thicknesses of an easily
machined and finished board.
Synthetic materials The astounding advances
in synthetic chemistry and the development of
plastics have brought unprecedented changes
to the way furniture is made. In many cases the
skills of the cabinetmaker have been overtaken
by engineers skilled in machine development
or by semi-skilled assemblers putting together
prefabricated parts.
Plastics have been known since the nineteenth
century with the work of Alexander
Parkes, but their commercial application to furniture-making
is a twentieth century phenomenon.
In furniture use, plastics have been used
for construction, decoration and finishing. The
replacement of animal glues with synthetic
resins in most assembly and laminating
processes is a result of the development in
adhesives science. The development of ureaformaldehyde
adhesives for veneering and
laminating, polyvinyl acetate adhesives for gen-