FURNITURE 



2356 



FUSING POINT 



Modern Taste in Furniture. All of the 

 French and English eighteenth-century styles 

 of furniture have been copied by European 

 and American manufacturers, and these have 

 made their way into many twentieth-century 

 homes; but recent years have seen an ever- 

 increasing popular demand for furniture which 

 is in keeping with present-day ideals of utility, 

 comfort and beauty. Simplicity and dura- 

 bility, typified by the dignified and substantial 

 mission furniture and its modifications, are 

 qualities which commend themselves to the 

 best modern taste. "Have nothing in your 

 room that you do not know to be useful," is 

 sound advice from that famous English manu- 

 facturer of artistic furniture William Morris 

 (which see). The practice of filling the house 

 with useless bric-a-brac, cheap pictures and 

 vases, tables and chairs with fragile legs and 

 furniture that is weakly constructed and show- 

 ily decorated cannot be too strongly con- 

 demned. Plain, well-made artistic furniture, 

 which lasts indefinitely and can be easily kept 

 in sanitary condition, lends dignity to the 

 humblest home. 



Popular Woods. Oak has long been a favor- 

 ite wood for the furnishings of hall, library 

 and dining room; mahogany, curly birch and 

 maple are all utilized for bedroom furnishings, 

 and mahogany is widely used both in the din- 

 ing rooms and drawing rooms of the better- 

 furnished homes. Circassian walnut, a beauti- 

 ful Russian wood, is an established favorite in 

 America for' bedroom furniture. The better 

 woods being expensive, veneering is much em- 

 ployed. 



The American Furniture Industry. There 

 are in the United States about 3,200 factories 

 for the manufacture of furniture, which require 

 the services of nearly 130,000 men and women. 

 The value of the yearly output to the manufac- 

 turers is about $371,000,000. The three leading 

 states in the industry are, in order, New York, 

 Michigan and Illinois, the two latter being 

 practically equal in value of products. The 

 chief centers for the manufacture of furniture 

 are New York, Chicago, Grand Rapids (Mich.), 

 Philadelphia, Saint Louis and Boston. Until 

 about 1900 Grand Rapids was the greatest 

 furniture manufacturing city in the world. 



It is interesting to note that the familiar 

 rocking chair is entirely an American creation, 

 and so, too, are the folding bed and its adapta- 

 tions, and the chiffonier. In equipment and 

 organization, American furniture factories are 

 superior to any others throughout the world. 



In the Dominion of Canada there are over 

 170 furniture factories, representing an invest- 

 ment of about $6,500,000. Ontario, with about 

 120 factories, is the most important center of 

 the industry, and Quebec, with about forty, is 

 next in rank. B.M.W. 



Consult Lockwood's Colonial Furniture in 

 America; Lltchfleld's Illustrated History of Fur- 

 niture. 



FUR'NIVALL, FREDERICK JAMES (1825- 

 1910), an English philologist and one of the 

 most influential workers in the history of Eng- 

 lish scholarship. He will be remembered 

 through his success in founding, for the publi- 

 cation of texts, The Early English Text So- 

 ciety, The Chaucer Society, The Ballad So- 

 ciety, The New Shakespeare Society, The 

 Browning Society, The Wycliffe Society and 

 The Shelley Society. Chiefly through the 

 medium of these societies, he edited numerous 

 manuscripts, including his monumental work 

 the Six-Text edition of Chaucer's Canterbury 

 Tales. He likewise edited a series of forty- 

 three facsimiles of the quartos of Shake- 

 speare's plays, a work which won for him his 

 greatest distinction, from an American stand- 

 point. Dr. Furnivall was born at Egham, in 

 Surrey, and was educated at University Col- 

 lege, London, and at Cambridge. 



FUR SEAL. See SEAL, subhead Fur Seal; 

 FU.R AND FUR TRADE. 



FUSE, fuze, an abbreviation of jusil, mean- 

 ing a gun, is the name given to many devices 

 used for discharging explosives in guns, shells 

 and mines. The simplest form of fuse is made 

 of waterproofed jute yarn spun round a core 

 of explosive powder. The explosive is usually 

 of gunpowder, mixed with chemicals to make 

 it burn slowly. One end of the fuse is con- 

 nected with the charge to be exploded, the 

 other end being ignited. The fuse burns until 

 the sparks reach the charge, when the ex- 

 plosion occurs. Ordinary fuse of the type 

 mentioned above burns at the rate of one foot 

 in half a minute. All blasting operations for- 

 merly were thus timed by regulating the length 

 of fuse, but charges are now usually fired by 

 electric fuses. A metal cylinder, containing two 

 copper wires connected by a very fine fusible 

 wire, is filled with explosive and placed in the 

 blasting charge. An electric current is sent 

 through the wires, causing the thin connecting 

 wire to fuse and produce a spark which sets 

 fire to the charge. 



FUSING POINT. See MELTING POINT; also 

 FREEZING. 



