January 10, 1917 



Hardwood Record — Veneer & Panel Section 



29 



Value of Matching on High-Grade Goods 



This Important Question Often Has a Very Real Influence 

 on Sales — It Should Be Carefully Watched 



HERE IS PROBABLY NO PART in the process 

 of manufacturing high-grade furniture that will 

 affect the value to any greater extent than the 

 matching of the face veneers, and there is no 

 place during its journey from the forest to the consumer 

 where the value of matching counts for more than when 

 on display in the dealer's show room. It is here that the 

 comparisons are made, and poorly matched furniture, 

 though otherwise well made, stands a poor chance of 

 being selected when on display beside carefully matched 

 and well-finished goods of the same variety. 



A prominent dealer remarked recently that fully 

 seventy-five per cent of his customers for the high-grade 

 goods were influenced in their selections by the matching 

 and finish, and rarely were the construction or stability 

 of the goods criticized. If the design is pleasing and the 

 proportions near enough to being right to avoid con- 

 spicuousness, the sale then depends entirely on the 

 matching and finish. 



While quartered-oak and mahogany veneers are con- 

 sidered easy to match, yet it is not uncommon to see 

 some goods that would lead us to believe that the inten- 

 tion of the veneer man or matcher was to see how much 

 contrast could be produced. Uniformity is the most 

 important point in matching veneers, and applies with 

 equal importance to color, figure or texture, so long as 

 it was the same species of timber. 



This is one way of getting a lot of it through, but the 

 results are anything but pleasing to the eye after being 

 finished. It very often happens in a flitch of oak veneer 

 that one edge is comparatively soft and well figured, 

 while the other edge is very hard with practically no 

 figure at all. I have seen flitches of this kind cut up for 

 sideboard tops and the hard edges taped together to 

 form the center of the top, while the softer and well- 

 figured parts were at the outer edges, leaving the most 

 important portion of the top with practically plain veneer. 

 Probably the only incentive for so doing was that the 

 hard edge was fairly straight, while the soft edge required 

 trimming. Had the soft edges been taped together and 

 the hard part of the veneer been to the outer edge of the 

 top, the offal of the after-trimming would reduce the 

 amount of poor figured stock in the finished top, while 

 in the case of the poor figured edges being taped, the 

 choicest part of the veneer was in the offal. 



The same thing applies to stripe mahogany veneer. 

 In the case of quartered oak, when used for bedroom or 

 dining-room suites, much depends on the kind of veneer 

 selected. Take, for instance, a bedroom suite of, say, 

 six to ten pieces. It rarely happens that the full suite is 

 sold. It is usually minus a chiffonier or washstand, or 



possibly only the chiffonier and dresser will comprise 

 an order. The result of such sales is that there are odd 

 quantities of some pieces left, and the next order to the 

 factory is made out to even up the suites. 



In such cases it often happens that a dresser is veneered 

 with an entirely different figured veneer from that of the 

 rest of the suite, and happens more often in oak than in 

 mahogany, on account of the greater variety of figure 

 found in quartered oak. The fault is usually attributed 

 to the man who prepared the veneer, but the blame is 

 misplaced, for, while the veneer man or matchers can 

 make or mar the appearance of the case in the matching, 

 they have no control of the figure in the veneer, and 

 right here may be found the cause of certain pieces of the 

 same suite not having the same kind of veneer. 



The proper place to lay the blame is on the veneer 

 buyer, for in selecting veneer for a special purpose, such 

 as mentioned, it is very important that a uniform color, 

 figure and texture should be obtained and probably more 

 care is required in selecting oak than in any other kind of 

 veneer. What is termed a "blotch figure" is about the 

 only variety of figure that will insure a perfect match, one 

 batch with another. The variety known as "stripe" or 

 "tiger stripe" certainly presents a very fine appearance 

 and will match nicely, too, but the lack of uniformity 

 makes it unsuitable for the class of work mentioned. It 

 is common to find, in the same flitch of veneer, such a 

 contrast between the top sheet and the bottom sheet that 

 the critical consumer would imagine they were out of 

 entirely different trees. 



Another objection to the stripe figure in oak is that 

 it doesn't always run at the same angle in the sheet, some 

 beingnearly square across the sheet and possibly changing 

 in the same flitch to an angle of forty-five degrees. Some 

 manufacturers do not regard this as any objection, and 

 this probably accounts for the mismated bedroorri' and 

 dining-room suites occasionally seen on the dealer s 

 floor. The veneer man and matchers may have accom- 

 plished all that was possible in the veneer, and possibly 

 the grade was good, but the variety of figure was such 

 that uniformity was an impossibility. 



When goods must match continuously, the veneer must 

 be specially selected. This may seem to some like split- 

 ting hairs, but on expensive, high-grade goods probably 

 nothing appeals to the consumer so much as the har- 

 mony which constitutes a practically perfect match in 

 color, figure and texture. 



In the case of mahogany less difficulty is experienced, 

 for the stripe mahogany is not possessed of such a va- 

 riety of figure as found in the oak, although considerable 

 care must be exercised, for occasionally we find a sort 



