86 
House & Garden 
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Qe??uine S&eed?¥umiture 
Unusual Designs Created Exclusively for 
Homes of Refinement, Clubs and Yachts 
HIGHEST QUALITY 
BUT NOT HIGHEST PRICED 
CRETONNES, CHINTZES, UPHOLSTERY FABRICS 
Interior Decorating 
Ite REED SHOP, Inc. 
581 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
“Suggestions in Reed Furniture” forwarded on receipt of 25c postage 
What to Know About Furniture 
(Continued jrom page 84) 
composition ornament, and its use by 
the most reputable of medium grade 
and good furniture makers gives it gen¬ 
eral sanction. Emersonianally speaking, 
perhaps we should prefer no carving at 
all to imitation carving, but composition 
ornament is so well done that it may be 
safe to leave it to individual personal 
taste. 
The same is true of lacquered and 
painted decorations. They should be 
well-done or not attempted, on a basis 
of strict, abstract esthetic ethics,—but 
all furniture is not made and bought 
on such a basis. If it were, a great 
many people would have to sit on boxes 
and sleep on straw ticks. 
Poor finish manifests itself in uneven 
rpplication, insufficient rubbing down, 
and in a tendency to fill up the finer 
angles of molding. As finishing is one 
of the more expensive operations of 
manufacture, poor finish is an obvious 
manufacturing economy. If you buy it, 
it is well to do so open-eyed. 
Of course, poor construction is one of 
the greatest faults of cheap furniture, 
even if due allowance be made for the 
exigencies of cost-cutting. 
Cheap furniture usually connotes 
drawers that stick and doors which are 
not hung or fitted properly. 
In better furniture, and, of course, in 
the best, drawers are dovetailed at the 
back, which helps to prevent them from 
spreading, and slide on tracks, instead 
of bearing all their weight on their bot¬ 
toms. In better grades of furniture, 
too, all the interior and unseen parts 
are likely to be oiled and varnished, 
partly that they may keep clean, and 
partly to render them impervious to 
changing weather conditions. 
Because of the cellular absorption of 
moisture by wood, a physical and bo¬ 
tanical fact, even the best made drawers 
may stick a little under pronounced 
climatic changes. For which reason, 
those who dwell near the sea do well to 
keep a little paraffin in the house—the 
simplest first aid to refractory drawers. 
Poor hardware is an affliction—espe¬ 
cially poor locks—but good hardware 
and good locks can seldom be figured 
in a piece of cheap furniture. 
In the matter of design, most cheap 
furniture might almost as well be pro¬ 
duced in good, unpretentious patterns, 
for it is as easy to make a graceful cut¬ 
ting as an ugly one. Be it said, how¬ 
ever, that both historic period, accuracy, 
and modern adaptive ingenuity are 
yearly becoming more usual attributes 
of astonishingly inexpensive furniture. 
The fourth item of the list, being 
made up for the most part of points the 
reverse of those in the third item, may 
not require such lengthy elucidation. 
Inlay and Antique Finishes 
Inlay and marqueteries were not men¬ 
tioned at all in connection with cheap 
furniture. They cannot be cheaply im¬ 
itated. Not only are rare woods re¬ 
quired, but highly skilled cabinet-mak¬ 
ers to execute the work. Lacquer is 
imitated, but real lacquer possesses so 
much greater depth and richness that 
the imitation is not deceptive. At most, 
imitation lacquer or poorly executed 
decorative work succeed only in ap¬ 
proximating the decorative effect of the 
whole—they do not come dangerously 
near the real thing. In the matter of 
decoration (also listed item No. 10), it 
will be remembered that the Brothers 
Adam employed Angelica Kauffman, 
R. A., and Pergolesi to paint medal¬ 
lions, and the greatest painters of the 
Italian Renaissance lent their talents to 
the painting of panels for cassoni and 
cabinets. 
Fine finishes are the result of much 
experience on the part of the manu¬ 
facturer, of the employment of skilled 
labor, and the expenditure of much time 
in rubbing and setting. The question of 
finish again comes up under item No. 9, 
and might as well be settled here. 
For many years mahogany furniture 
was popularly worked up with what the 
trade calls a “piano” finish, which 
showed the slightest scratch or dent, 
and was a task to keep clean. Today 
a “piano” finished piece is rare, almost 
the whole demand veering to the “an¬ 
tique” finish, a lustrous and very pleas¬ 
ing and serviceable surface brought up 
with oil and wax, little or no varnish 
being used and no shellac. A furniture 
finish should be as pleasing to the touch 
as well as the eye. The same treatment 
is equally popular on walnut and oak, 
a special device being that called “high¬ 
lighting.” In this treatment, the fin¬ 
isher rubs off portions of the basic stain, 
on moldings, corners and the highest 
projections of carving, thus simulating 
the “used” and “timed-with” appear¬ 
ance of the antique. For on the deco¬ 
rative point of view, the device is per¬ 
fectly legitimate, for the same reason 
that one can only commend the present 
tendency artificially to soften sharp, 
machine-cut edges, corners and mold¬ 
ings. The intent is not to “fake” an 
antique, but to secure as much as pos¬ 
sible of the decorative qualities of the 
antique. 
Veneering Versus Solid 
The sixth item alludes to veneering, a 
practice recognized as legitimate by the 
best cabinet-makers of the Georgian 
period, as well as those of the William 
and Mary and Queen Anne periods. 
Because it is often used in general par¬ 
lance as synonymous with “sham,” or 
“deceit,” veneer has unjustly fallen un¬ 
der a cloud. Properly executed, veneer¬ 
ing may be a fine job, and by the use 
of a non-warping care, may produce a 
piece of furniture which is thoroughly 
excellent. 
Another popular misconception is the 
worship of the word “solid” in connec¬ 
tion with cabinet woods. As a matter 
of physics, the “built-up” panel, with 
veneered surface, is a far better piece 
of work than a solid panel, which will 
inevitably shrink, swell and warp, even 
splitting, if not properly fastened. The 
early cabinet-makers would have used 
built-up panels, if they had the ma¬ 
chinery necessary to cut thin layers of 
wood readily. A four-ply panel, for 
instance, is built up of four thin sheets 
of wood with the grain running in 
four different directions, and glued and 
pressed together. No amount of mois¬ 
ture can warp this kind of a panel. 
The seventh item affords material for 
a book on cabinet-making, and cannot 
be greatly amplified here. The con¬ 
struction of drawers was touched upon 
under the third item. Blocking should 
be both glued and screwed. It is the 
preventative of opening joints, or the 
loosening of joints through hard usage 
of a piece of furniture. It is always 
well to notice how hardware is applied, 
especially locks, making sure that they 
are carefully and nicely mortised into 
the wood. 
The eighth item affords considerable 
material for observation. Hardware 
cannot be too good for a fine piece of 
furniture. The best furniture hardware 
obtainable is not too good, and its fine¬ 
ness should be not only a technical mat¬ 
ter, but a matter of historic accuracy. 
The answer to the eleventh—the up¬ 
holstered piece—is : “Very little, proba¬ 
bly.” In no other type of furniture 
have we so much need to turn for 
protection to the integrity of the maker's 
name. The most important parts of 
upholstered, or “overstuffed” pieces are 
hidden beneath the cover—the laying of 
the webbing, the tying of many layers, 
the anchoring of the springs, and so 
(Continued on page 88) 
