734 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



cheaper sorts, which were used by the common people, 

 have not been preserved, even in pictures and records. 

 The Greeks employed the lathe in their furniture shops, 

 made folding chairs on the order of modern campstools, 

 and being mathematicians, they liked three-legged tables 

 which would stand firmly on any sort of uneven floor. 

 The Romans went in for novelties in furniture. Their 

 tables had one, three, or four legs, tops circular, hex- 

 agonal, or rectangular, and extremely fine veneers were 

 used by the rich who could afford it. Excavations at 

 Pompeii disappointed those who expected to find large 



HEPrELWHITE WOODEN DRESSER 



No one can think of this piece of beautiful furniture as being made 

 of anything but wood. Its delicate lines suggest nothing else, 

 whether it is of maple, gum, walnut, cherry, or any one of numerous 

 other excellent furniture woods native of this country or imported 

 from overseas. 



quantities of fine furniture made of wood. A few frag- 

 ments were unearthed, but apparently the volcanic ash 

 which buried the city contained chemicals which decom- 

 posed wood and reduced it to brown dust. The few 

 fragments of furniture that were recovered sufficiently 

 intact to be restored, served as models after which much 

 of the Louis XVI furniture was designed seventeen 

 centuries later. A wooden bedstead dug up at Pompeii 

 was four feet wide, one and a half feet high, and seven 

 and a half feet long, had turned legs, and was equipped 

 with wooden pillows; but the pillows were not copied 

 by the Louis XVI furniture makers. 



Changes in furniture styles and fashions have been 

 many, ranging through the Italian Renaissance, French 

 Renaissance, Gothic, Elizabethan, Jacobean, Louis XIV, 

 Louis XV, Louis XVI, Charles II, William and Mary, 



Queen Anne, George, Chippendale, Sheraton, and Hep- 

 pelwhite. These all mean much to persons interested in 

 furniture fashions and styles, but they cannot be dis- 

 cussed here. 



Furniture represents the fourth largest wood-using 

 industry of the United States, the total annual demand 

 for wood in this line approximating 950,000,000 feet. 

 The industries whose demands exceed that amount are 

 planing mill products, car construction, and box making. 

 Of the woods which supply the furniture factories, 

 slightly more than 17,000,000 feet a year are of foreign 

 origin, leaving more than 98 per cent to be supplied by 

 our own forests. Hardwoods largely predominate over 

 softwoods in the furniture business ; and of the domestic 

 stock, softwoods aggregate 57,000,000 feet, hardwoods 

 870,000,000, or about six and a half per cent for the 

 former to the latter's ninety-three and a half per cent. 

 Practically all that comes from foreign countries is 

 hardwood. 



The native hardwoods which contribute to the furni- 

 ture industry with the annual amount of each are 



THE CHINA CLOSET STYLE 



Wood and glass form an excellent combination in the china closet where 

 an attractive outward display is wanted, and likewise a pattern of_ con- 

 struction that will give a good view of the ceramics and cut glass within. 

 Metal never was in much evidence in this kind of furniture. 



