Figure 20.—Shows the names of the parts of a chair.
And yet it would be inaccurate to think of furniture as an impersonal, machine-made product; craftsmanship is still basically important in furniture making, and will remain so always. From 50 to 60 different and highly specialized machines are used in a modern factory making desks, chairs, and tables, and these machines perform all purely mechanical operations with amazing speed and more than human accuracy. Yet at every stage, from the selection of the woods to the final touches in the finishing room, the taste and accumulated skill of expert craftsmen are imperative. In the making of upholstered and reed furniture, machinery plays a subordinate part, and the skill of the craftsman is and always will be the dominant factor.
QUALITY OFTEN CONCEALED
Furniture making employs many materials and many processes. In every one of these materials and processes there are wide differences in excellence between the worst and the best. All of these differences are accurately known only to the manufacturer because they are concealed in the finished product. Many of them are known to the expert salesman. Few are known to the consumer who buys furniture too infrequently to become informed on concealed values, and naturally is disposed to base a judgment of value on the two obvious factors—eye appeal and price. As a result sales volume, to say nothing of public appreciation of furniture, is unnecessarily low.
MODERN FACTORIES BUILD CONCEALED VALUES INTO MANY PRODUCTS
It is obvious that all the operations of preparing wood, routing it through the factory, synchronizing the many processes, and eliminating waste can be performed most efficiently and economically in a modern plant and under the control of scientific knowledge and engineering skill. Factories so operated, therefore, may build into their product concealed or special values which are passed to the consumer in the form of lower price, quality for quality. These concealed values actually may take several forms; they may be concerned with materials and processes, or with construction and design. Although their service value is readily understood, their actual presence in any particular piece of furniture is not so easily determined by the inexperienced salesperson or the infrequent purchaser.
USE OF WOOD FREE FROM DEFECTS
When wood reaches the factory from the sawmill in the form of dimension lumber it contains some imperfections, among them rotted or discolored heartwood, stained sapwood, season checks, splits, knots, worm and grub holes, and decayed tissue. The more or less complete rejection of all defective lumber naturally affects production costs, and the use of perfect lumber in the unexposed parts of a piece of furniture constitutes a concealed value.