KIRKHAMFurniture-Making1982.pdf

eplaced by the cabinet-maker, the chair-maker and the frame-maker. In
the eighteenth century, joiners were employed by furniture-makers but they
only did jobs such as making window shutters, window blinds and panelling,
all of which lay outside furniture-making proper8.
cabinet-making
Cabinet-making developed out of the joiner's craft in the years between
1660 and 1690 as a result of new fashions in design introduced after the
Restoration. The court and upper classes, many of whom had been in exile,
wanted furniture comparable with that obtainable in France and Holland.
A lighter type of case furniture was developed using walnut, which demanded
greater skill in working than the softer oak previously used. Much of it
involved the new technique of veneering, by which a thinly-sliced layer of
wood was adhered to a solid base. The fashion for marquetry or highly
decorative inlaid veneer work accelerated the separation of the cabinet-
maker, the specialist in this new type of cabinet work and veneering, from
the joiner.
The term cabinet-maker was used immediately after the Restoration
when Adrian Bolte applied for the post of royal cabinet-maker 10 and it was
used in the following year to refer to certain members of the Jjfl9
11 . . 12
Company . John Evelyn used the term in his Sylva, 1664 , and Samuel
Pepys referred to the person who made new inlaid table' in 1667 as a
cabinet-maker 13 . The taste of the court and upper classes, the large
scale re-building and re-furnishing after the Great Fire of 1666 and the
presence of foreign designers and craftsmen skilled in the new styles and
techniques all encouraged the growth of the new craft.
It took time, however, before the term cabinet-maker was widely
used and the speed with which cabinet-making emerged as a clearly
distinguishable and separate craft should not be exaggerated. Even in
20