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KIRKHAMFurniture-Making1982.pdf

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the production of parts for chairs took place on a considerable scale in<br />

the second half of the eighteenth century. The 1763 Linnell inventory<br />

lists 79 pair of mahogany arms for chairs, 122 pair of mahogany stumps,<br />

0 • 0<br />

200 top ribs 0., 222 Marlborough feet for tables and chairs 0 , ... 21 pair<br />

of OG legs for chairs o?, 112 bannisters for chair back 0, ... 60 mahogany<br />

splats for chairs •••t119, The large number of parts itemised suggests<br />

that certain types of chairs were produced using ready-made components.<br />

So great was the emphasis on the all-round craftsman in the quality trade,<br />

however, that it is unlikely that any chair-maker, either journeyman or<br />

apprentice, was employed regularly and exclusively at making either legs<br />

or arms for chairs in the Linnell workshops. Such work probably<br />

represented a rational use of time, with craftsmen producing component<br />

parts when there were no complete chairs to be made.<br />

The division of labour within chair-making took place largely<br />

outside the quality trade0 It occurred most particularly in the small<br />

East End firms which, after 1820, worked directly for the large retail<br />

outlets. Relatively simple jobs such as the making of chair legs were<br />

done by unskilled workers and apprentices 120 . The garret-master, who<br />

hawked his goods and sold where he could for what he could, also depended<br />

on sub-divided labour, usually that of young boys, in order to keep down<br />

costs. By the mid-nineteenth century, each separate part of the work,<br />

usually done by an all-round craftsman in the quality trade,was done by a<br />

different person in the cheap trade. Those who made chair legs made nothing<br />

else while those who produced arms for chairs worked only at that sub-division<br />

121<br />

of the craft<br />

cane chair-making<br />

Not only was chair-making a separate craft from joinery in the late<br />

seventeenth century, but, before the end of the century, a specialisation<br />

36

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