One of the basic pieces of furniture, a chair is a type of seat. Its primary features are two pieces of a durable material, attached as back and seat to one another at a 90° or slightly greater angle, with usually the four corners of the horizontal seat attached in turn to four legs—or other parts of the seat's underside attached to three legs or to a shaft about which a four-arm turnstile on rollers can turn—strong enough to support the weight of a person who sits on the seat and leans against the vertical back. The legs are typically high enough for the seated person's thighs and knees to form a 90° or lesser angle. Used in a number of rooms in homes, in schools and offices, and in various other workplaces, chairs may be made of wood, metal, or synthetic materials, and either the seat alone or the entire chair may be padded or upholstered in various colors and fabrics.
A writing table has a series of drawers directly under the surface of the table, to contain writing implements, so that it may serve as a desk. Antique versions have the usual divisions for the inkwell, the blotter and the sand or powder tray in one of the drawers, and a surface covered with leather or some other material less hostile to the quill or the fountain pen than simple hard wood.
There are two kinds of trestle desks, the antique form and the modern improvisation.
A standing desk or stand-up desk is a desk conceived for writing or reading while standing up or while sitting on a high stool.
The secretaire en portefeuille is an antique desk form which is usually mounted on rollers at the end of four jutting legs. The legs in turn support what appears as an oversize vertically mounted wooden pizza box. This is a cabinet a few inches thick, with barely enough space in it for the raised desktop surface and a few pens and sheets of paper disposed vertically.
A commode is any of many pieces of furniture. The Oxford English Dictionary has multiple meanings of "commode". The first relevant definition reads: "A piece of furniture with drawers and shelves; in the bedroom, a sort of elaborate chest of drawers ; in the drawing room, a large kind of chiffonier." The drawing room is itself an term for a formal reception room, and a chiffonier is, in this sense, a small sideboard dating from the early 19th century.
A footstool is a piece of furniture or a support used to elevate the foot. There are two main types of footstool, which can be loosely categorized into those designed for comfort and those designed for function.
Shaker furniture is a distinctive style of furniture developed by the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, commonly known as Shakers, a religious sect that had guiding principles of simplicity, utility and honesty. Their beliefs were reflected in the well-made furniture of minimalist designs.
Shaker communities were largely self-sufficient: in their attempt to separate themselves from the outside world and to create a heaven-on-earth, members grew their own food, constructed their own buildings, and manufactured their own tools and household furnishings.—Metropolitan Museum of Art
R. Bruce Hoadley is Professor Emeritus of Building and Construction Materials in the Department of Environmental Conservation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
A bead is a woodworking decorative treatment applied to various elements of wooden furniture, boxes and other items.
A splat is the vertical central element of a chair back. Typically this element of a chair is of exposed wood design. The splat is an important element of furniture identification, since its design has a multitude of variations incorporating the themes of different furniture periods. Chippendale's furniture was designed using varied splat details to include Gothic, Chinese, English and some with French details.
The Queen Anne style of furniture design developed before, during, and after the reign of Anne, Queen of Great Britain (1702–1714).
Hogarth Painting the Comic Muse is a painting in the National Portrait Gallery, London by the British artist William Hogarth. It was painted in approximately 1757 and published as a print in etching and engraving in 1758, with its final and sixth state in 1764. Hogarth used this particular self-portrait as the frontispiece of his collected engravings, published in 1764.
Rustic furniture is furniture employing sticks, twigs or logs for a natural look. The term “rustic” is derived from Latin “rusticus”. The style is rooted in Romantic tradition. In the US it is almost synonymous with the National Park Service rustic style of architecture. Many companies, artists and craftspeople make rustic furniture in a variety of styles and with a variety of historical and contemporary influences.
A leg is a weight-bearing and locomotive anatomical structure, usually having a columnar shape. During locomotion, legs function as "extensible struts". The combination of movements at all joints can be modeled as a single, linear element capable of changing length and rotating about an omnidirectional "hip" joint.
A foot is the floor level termination of furniture legs. Legless furniture may be slightly raised off of the floor by their feet.
A stool is one of the earliest forms of seat furniture. It bears many similarities to a chair. It consists of a single seat, for one person, without back or armrests, on a base of either three or four legs. A stool is generally distinguished from chairs by their lack of arms and a back. Variants exist with one, two or five legs and these various stools are referred to by some people as "backless chairs". Some modern stools have backs.
A concealed hinge drilling jig is a type of support jig, designed for drilling 3 cm holes to fit concealed hinges into modern wardrobe doors. As many of the complementary tools used in woodworking, it uses an electric hand-drill for its operation, making a Forstner bit to turn.
