96 



WOOD. 



bard, and so heavy as to sink in water. It is im- 

 pregnated with resin, and, on this account, durable 

 in liquids. Handles of tools, boxes of gudgeons, 

 wheels of pulleys, castors, balls, stopcocks, mallets, 

 &c., are made of it. It is imported from the West 

 Indies and South America. 



We shall now give an account of some of the 

 principal woods used in cabinet work, taken from 

 the Library of Entertaining Knowledge. 



Fancy \\'<nls. Even at a comparatively early 

 stage of the arts, mankind appear to have mode use 

 of the bright or variegated colours of wood, to give 

 beauty both to their dwellings and their furniture. 

 The temple built by king Solomon was overlaid, 

 on the inside, with boards of cedar " all was cedar ; 

 there was no stone seen" and, among the most 

 ancient specimens of ornamental furniture that are 

 to be met with, we find that attempts have been 

 made to heighten the effect by the contrast of vari- 

 ous kinds of wood. Though, both in the materials 

 and the designs, these are inferior to the produc- 

 tions of modern art, many of the cabinets which 

 are still preserved have much higher claims to no- 

 tice than their mere antiquity. In all these works, 

 a veneer, or thin plate of the fancy wood, is laid 

 down in glue upon a surface of a plainer description. 

 This process is, of course, cheaper than if the 

 whole work were made of the solid fancy wood. 

 The beauty of fancy wood arises, in many sorts, 

 from its being cross-grained, or presenting the 

 fibres endways or obliquely to the surface. These 

 different positions of the fibres, as well as their 

 different colours in grained woods, give a clouded 

 and mottled variety to the surface ; and, when some 

 of the parts are partially transparent, as in the case 

 with fine mahogany, the surface gives out a play of 

 different tints, as the observer shifts his place, or 

 the light falls upon them, and, consequently, is re- 

 flected at different angles. When mahogany was 

 first introduced as a cabinet timber, it seems to 

 have been in the dark-coloured, hard, and straight- 

 grained trees, which are now used for chairs and 

 other articles, in which the solid timber is prefer- 

 red ; and on that account, mahogany was not much 

 used in combination with other woods. When, 

 however, its great value was known the ease 

 with which it can be cut, the improvement that 

 varnish gives to its colours, the firmness with which 

 it holds in glue, and the improvement which, when 

 properly taken care of, it gains in time it was 

 found that good mahogany was much too valuable 

 a timber for being used solid, and it began to be 

 employed as the staple timber in veneering. Other 

 foreign woods, some of them lighter and others 

 darker, were employed for borders and ornaments ; 

 but mahogany was used for the body of the work ; 

 and when it came to be so used, a great revolution 

 was effected in the art of cabinet-making. On the 

 first introduction of mahogany, the same process 

 was resorted to, that had before been practised 

 with the walnut and other woods, and effect was 

 sought to be produced by quartering panels, form- 

 ing them of gyrony* of sectors, with the grain in 

 opposite directions, and other fantastic and unna- 

 tural arrangements : but, in course of time, a better 

 taste was introduced, and the object was to make 

 the whole surface have the same appearance as if the 

 work had been made solid out of the rich timber. 

 This .was one step towards the attainment of a 

 purer style ; but the continuity of the surface was 



A term of heraldry, In which a shield is formed in sectors 

 from the centre. 



still interrupted by ill-sorted additions. Thu 

 breadth of the mahogany, which would in itself 

 have been beautiful, was broken by bands and 

 strings of other wood, without much regard to the 

 harmony of the colours; and thus that which, with 

 the veneer alone, would have been chaste and 

 classical, was reduced to a piece of patch-work. 

 The veneering, whether done in mahogany or any 

 other wood, was, at first, very expensive. The 

 veneers were cut by the hund ; and thus the piece 

 cut off was of unequal thickness in different parts, 

 the wood was mangled by the operation of cutting, 

 and the finest pieces, which, as has been said, are 

 cross-grained, or have the fibres across their thick- 

 ness were always in danger of being broken. It 

 had been found that veneers, laid upon good bodies 

 of timber, whether of the more coarse mahoganies 

 or of any other kind, were better, in point both of 

 beauty and of standing without warping, than solid 

 timber ; but the cutting of the veneers by the hand 

 was very laborious, and wasted the tin/ber, so that, 

 though the plan was a good one, it was expensive. 

 When the harder and more unmanageable species 

 of fancy woods came to be used, the difficulty and 

 expense were further increased; and though more 

 beauty and variety were imparted to cabinet furni- 

 ture, they were imparted at a corresponding in- 

 crease of expense. Nor was it till the invention of 

 machinery for the cutting of wood into veneers, by 

 Mr Brunei, that we had the full advantage of the 

 beautiful art of veneering. The machinery used 

 for this purpose consists of circular saws, driven by 

 mechanical power; and they have so diminished 

 the price of cutting veneers that the saving is im- 

 mense. The quantity of veneer that can, by means 

 of these machines, be sawed out of a given quantity 

 of timber, is astonishing. Those who are reckoned 

 respectable cabinet-makers do not, in general, wish 

 to have more than eight or nine thicknesses out of 

 the inch ; but those who manufacture furniture for 

 occasional sale, and are, in consequence, indifferent 

 as to the quality of the timber, and the durability 

 of their work, often have the inch cut into fifteen 

 or sixteen thicknesses. Veneering in fancy woods 

 has sometimes been compared to gilding arid plat- 

 ing ; but the process does not gain by the compari- 

 son, as the covering of one wood with another is a 

 much nearer approach to solidity than the covering 

 of one metal with another. While the cabinet 

 article is kept in such a state that the glue is not 

 dissolved, the covering of beautiful wood does not 

 wear out ; and thus, with a vast saving in the more 

 costly material, there is the same durability as if 

 nothing but that material had been used for the 

 whole. There is another advantage in the use of 

 fancy woods on the surface the body of the article 

 upon whicb the fancy wood is laid can be much 

 better put together than if it had formed the ex- 

 ternal part of the article. Where that is the case, 

 dovetails, or mortises, cannot be wedged without, 

 an external seam ; but, in veneering, the body of 

 the article can be put together with every degree 

 of care and strength, and the veneer will hide the 

 whole. 



Mahogany is of universal use for furniture, from 

 the common tables of a village inn to the splendid 

 cabinets of a regal palace. But the general adop- 

 tion of this wood renders a nice selection necessary 

 for those articles which are costly and fashionable. 

 The extensive manufacture of piano-fortes has 

 much increased the demand for mahogany. Spanish 

 mahogany is decidedly the most beautiful ; but oc- 



