Principles of Decorative Design / Fourth Edition

by Christopher Dresser

Box-wood, Jamaica—not half as strong as the box of New South Wales.

Cedar of Jamaica—half as strong as the mahogany of New South Wales.[21]

Wood can be got of sufficient length to meet all the requirements of furniture-making, yet we not unfrequently find the arch structurally introduced into furniture, while it is absurd to employ it in wooden construction of any kind. The arch is a most ingenious invention, as it affords a means of spanning a large space with small portions of material, as with small stones, and at the same time gives great strength. It is, therefore, of the utmost utility in constructing stone buildings; but in works of furniture, where we have no large spaces to span, and where wood is of the utmost length required, and is stronger than our requirements demand, the use of the arch becomes structurally foolish and absurd. The folly of this mode of structure becomes more apparent when we notice that a wooden arch is always formed of one or two pieces, and not of very small portions, and when we further consider that, in order to the formation of an arch, the wood must be cut across its grain throughout the greater portion of its length, whereby its strength is materially decreased; while if the arch were formed of small pieces of stone great strength would be secured. Nothing can be more absurd than the practice of imitating in one material a mode of construction which is only legitimate in the case of another, and of failing to avail ourselves of the particular mode of utilising a material which secures a maximum of desirable results.

While I protest against the arch when structurally used in furniture, I see no objection to it if used only as a source of beauty, and when so situated as to be free from strain or pressure.

One of the objects which we are frequently called upon to construct is a chair. The chair is, throughout Europe and America, considered as a necessity of every house. So largely used are chairs, that one firm at High Wycombe employs 5,000 hands in making common cane-bottomed chairs alone; and yet we see but few chairs in the market which are well constructed. All chairs having curved frames—whether the curve is in the wood of the back, in the sides of the seat, or in the legs—are constructed on false principles. They are of necessity weak, and being weak are not useful. As they are formed by using wood in a manner which fails to utilise its qualities of strength, these chairs are offensive and absurd. It is true that, through being surrounded by such ill-formed objects from our earliest infancy, the eye often fails to be offended with such works as would offend it were they new to it; but this does not show that they are the less offensive, nor that they are not constructively wrong. Besides, whenever wood is cut across the grain, in order that we get anything approaching the requisite strength, it has to be much thicker and more bulky than would be required were the wood cut with the grain; hence such furniture is unnecessarily heavy and clumsy.

Fig. 26 represents a chair which I have taken the liberty of borrowing from Mr. Eastlake's work on household art.[22] This chair Mr. Eastlake gives as an illustration of good taste in the construction of furniture; but I give it as an illustration of that which is essentially bad and wrong. The legs are weak, being cross-grained throughout, and the mode of uniting the upper and lower portions of the legs (the two semicircles) by a circular boss is defective in the highest degree. Were I sitting in such a chair, I should be afraid to lean to the right or the left, for fear of the chair giving way. Give me a Yorkshire rocking-chair, in preference to one of these, where I know of my insecurity, much as I hate such.

A chair is a stool with a back-rest, and a stool is a board elevated from the ground or floor by supports, the degree of elevation being determined by the length of the legs of the person for whom the seat is made, or by the degree of obliquity which the body and legs are desired to take when the seat is in use. If the seat is to support the body when in an erect sitting posture, about seventeen to eighteen inches will be found a convenient height for the average of persons; but if the legs of the sitter are to take an oblique forward direction, then the seat may be lower.

A stool may consist of a thick piece of wood and of three legs inserted into holes bored in this thick top. If these legs pass to the upper surface of the seat, and are properly wedged in, a useful yet clumsy seat results. In order that the top of the stool be thin and light, it will be necessary that the legs be connected by frames, and it will be well that they be connected twice, once at the top of each leg, so that the seat may rest upon this frame, and once at least two-thirds of the distance from the top. The frame would now stand alone, and although the seat is formed of thin wood it will not crack, as it is supported all round on the upper frame.