KIRKHAMFurniture-Making1982.pdf

the production of parts for chairs took place on a considerable scale in
the second half of the eighteenth century. The 1763 Linnell inventory
lists 79 pair of mahogany arms for chairs, 122 pair of mahogany stumps,
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200 top ribs 0., 222 Marlborough feet for tables and chairs 0 , ... 21 pair
of OG legs for chairs o?, 112 bannisters for chair back 0, ... 60 mahogany
splats for chairs •••t119, The large number of parts itemised suggests
that certain types of chairs were produced using ready-made components.
So great was the emphasis on the all-round craftsman in the quality trade,
however, that it is unlikely that any chair-maker, either journeyman or
apprentice, was employed regularly and exclusively at making either legs
or arms for chairs in the Linnell workshops. Such work probably
represented a rational use of time, with craftsmen producing component
parts when there were no complete chairs to be made.
The division of labour within chair-making took place largely
outside the quality trade0 It occurred most particularly in the small
East End firms which, after 1820, worked directly for the large retail
outlets. Relatively simple jobs such as the making of chair legs were
done by unskilled workers and apprentices 120 . The garret-master, who
hawked his goods and sold where he could for what he could, also depended
on sub-divided labour, usually that of young boys, in order to keep down
costs. By the mid-nineteenth century, each separate part of the work,
usually done by an all-round craftsman in the quality trade,was done by a
different person in the cheap trade. Those who made chair legs made nothing
else while those who produced arms for chairs worked only at that sub-division
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of the craft
cane chair-making
Not only was chair-making a separate craft from joinery in the late
seventeenth century, but, before the end of the century, a specialisation
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