FURNITURE.
So far as machinery is concerned for converting wood into furniture, the
same has been anticipated in the previous chapter, but much remains to
be said about the articles of furniture themselves.
Although from ancient days the most ancient countries provided by hand
elaborate and beautiful articles of furniture of many descriptions, yet
it has been left for modern advances in machinery and kindred arts to
yield that universal supply of convenient and ornamental furniture which
now prevails.
The Egyptians used chairs and tables of a more modern form than the
Greeks or Romans, who lolled about on couches even at their meals; but
the Egyptians did not have the convenient section tables built in
sliding sections, which permit the table to be enlarged to accommodate
an increased number of guests. And now recently this modern form of
table has been improved, by arranging the sections and leaves so that
when the sections are slid out the leaves are automatically raised and
placed in position, which is done either by lazy-tongs mechanism, or by
a series of parallel links: Tables constructed with folding detachable
and adjustable legs, tables constructed for special purposes as sewing
machines, and typewriting machine tables, by which the machine head may
be dropped beneath the table top when not in use; tables combined with
desks wherein the table part may be slid into the desk part when not in
use and the sliding cover pulled down to cover and lock from sight both
the table and desk; surgical tables, adapted to be raised or lowered at
either end or at either side and to be extended; “knock down” tables,
adapted to be taken all apart for shipment or storage; tables combined
with chairs to be folded down by the side of the chair when not in use;
and many other useful forms have been added to the list.
Much ingenuity has been displayed in the construction of desks, to save
and economise space. Mention has been made of a combined folding desk
and extensible table. Another form is an arrangement of desk drawers,
whereby when one drawer is locked or unlocked all the rest are locked or
unlocked automatically. Whatever shape or function anyone desires in a
desk may be met, except, perhaps, the performance of the actual work of
the occupant.
In the matter of _beds_, the principal developments have been due to the
advancement of wood-working machinery, and the manufacture of iron,
steel, and brass. The old-fashioned ponderous bedsteads, put together by
heavy screws, have given way to those mortised and tenoned, joined and
matched, and by which they can easily be put up and taken down; and to
iron and brass bedsteads, which are both ornamental and more healthful.
No bed may be without an inexpensive steel spring frame or mattress for
the support of the bedding. Folding beds made to economise space, and
when folded upright become an ornamental bureau; and invalid bedsteads,
designed for shifting the position of the invalid, are among the many
modern improvements.
_Kitchen Utensils._--A vast amount of drudgery in the kitchen has been
relieved by the convenient inventions in labor-saving appliances: coffee
and spice mills, can-openers, stationary washtubs, stopper extractors,
superseding the old style of hand-corkscrews where large numbers of
bottles are to be uncorked; refrigerators and provision safes, attaching
and lifting devices and convenient culinary dishes and utensils of great
variety.
_Curtains_, _shades_ and _screens_ have been wonderfully improved and
their use made widely possible by modern inventions and new adaptation
of old methods. Wood, cotton, silk, paper, combined or uncombined with
other materials, in many novel ways unknown to our ancestors, have
rendered these articles available in thousands of homes where their use
was unknown and impossible a century ago. Among the most convenient
attachments to shades is the spring roller, invented by Hartshorn of
America, in 1864, whereby the shade is automatically rolled upon its
stick to raise or lower it.
Window screens for the purpose of excluding flies, mosquitoes, and other
insects, while freely admitting the air, are now made extensible and
adjustable in different ways to fit different sizes of windows. Curtains
and shades are provided with neat and most attractive supporting rods,
to which they are attached by brass or wooden rings, and provided with
easily manipulated devices to raise and securely hold them in any
desired position.
The art of steaming wood and bending it, by iron pattern forms
adjustable to the forms desired, as particularly devised in principle by
Blanchard in America in 1828-1840, referred to in Wood-working, has
produced great changes in the art of furniture making, especially in
chairs. A particularly interesting illustration of the results of this
art occurred in Austria. About forty years ago the manufacture in
Germany and Austria of furniture by machinery, especially of bent
wood-ware, became well established there; and by the time of the Vienna
Exposition in 1873, factories on a most extensive scale for the
construction of bed furniture were in operation among the vast mountain
beech forests of Moravia and Hungary. The greatest of these works were
located in Great Urgroez, Hungary, and Bisritz, Moravia, with twenty or
more auxiliary establishments. Between five and six thousand work people
were employed, the greater part of whom were females, and it was
necessary to use steam and water motors, to the extent of many hundred
horse power.
The forests were felled, and the tree-tops removed and made into
charcoal for use in the glass works of Bohemia. The trunks were hauled
to the mills and sawed into planks of suitable thickness by gang-saws.
The planks in turn were cut with circular saws into square pieces for
turning, and then the pieces turned and cut on lathes, to give them the
size required and the rounded shape; the pieces then steamed while in
their green state for twenty-four hours in suitable boilers, then taken
out and bent to the desired shape on a cast-iron frame by hand, then
subjected, with the desired pattern, to the pattern-turning table, and
cut; then kept locked in the pattern’s iron embrace until the pieces
were dried and permanently set in shape, then clamped to a bench, filed,
rasped, stained, and French polished by the deft hands of the women;
then assembled in proper position in frames of the form of the chair or
other article to be made, their contact surface sawed to fit at the
joints, and then finally the parts glued together and further secured by
the addition of a few screws or balls.
Chairs, lounges and lighter furniture were thus made from bent pieces of
wood with very few joints, having a neat and attractive appearance, and
possessing great strength. The art has spread to other forests and other
countries, and the turned, bent, highly polished and beautiful furniture
of this generation would have been but a dream of beauty to the
householder of a century ago.
Children’s chairs are made so that the seat may be raised or lowered, or
the chair converted into a perambulator. Dentist’s chairs have been
developed until it is only necessary for the operator to turn a valve
governing a fluid, generally oil, under pressure to raise or lower the
chair and the patient. In the more agreeable situation at the theatre or
concert one may hang his hat on the bottom of the chair, upturned to
afford access to it through a crowded row, and turning down the chair,
sit with pleasure, as the curtain is rolled up by compressed air, or
electricity, at the touch of a button.
To the unthinking and unobserving, the subject of _bottle stoppers_ is
not entrancing, but those acquainted with the art know with what long,
continuous, earnest efforts, thousands of inventors have sought for the
best and cheapest bottle stopper to take the place of corks--the
enormous demand for which was exhausting the supply and rendering their
price almost prohibitive.
One of the most successful types is a stopper of rubber combined with a
metal disk, and hung by a wire on the neck of the bottle, so that the
stopper can be used over and over again; another form composed of glass,
or porcelain, and cork; another is a thin disk of cork placed in a thin
metal cap which is crimped over a shoulder on the neck of the bottle,
and still another is a thin disk of pasteboard adapted for milk bottles
and pressed tightly within a rim on the inside of the neck of the
bottle.
In this connection should be mentioned that self-sealing fruit jar,
known from its inventor as “Mason’s fruit jar,” which came into such
universal use--that combination of screw cap, screw-threaded jar-neck
and the rubber ring, or gasket, on which the cap was screwed so tightly
as to seal the jar hermetically.
In lamplighting, what a wonderful change from the old oil lamps of
former ages! The modern lamp may be said to be an improved means of
grace, as it will hold out much longer, and shed a far more attractive
light for the sinner, whose return, by its genial light, is, even to the
end, so greatly desired.
The discovery of petroleum and its introduction as a light produced a
revolution in the construction of lamps. Wicks were not discarded, but
changed in shape from round to flat, and owing to the coarseness and
disagreeable odour of coal oil, especially in its early unrefined days,
devices first had for their object the easy feeding of the wick, and
perfect combustion. To this end the burner portion through which the
wick passed was perforated at its base to create a proper draft, and
later the cap over the base was also perforated. But with refined oil
the disagreeable odour continued. It was found that this was mainly due
to the fact that both in lamps and stoves the oil would ooze out of the
wick on to the adjacent parts of the lamps or stove, and when the wick
was lit the heat would burn or heat the oil and thus produce the odour.
Inventors therefore contrived to separate the oil reservoir and wick
part when the lamp or stove were not in use; and finally, in stoves, to
dispense with the wick altogether. As wickless oil stoves are now in
successful use the wickless lamp may be expected to follow.
The lamp, however, that throws all others into the shade is that
odourless, heatless, magic, mellow, tempered light of electricity, that
springs out from the little filament, in its hermetically sealed glass
cage, and shines with unsurpassed loveliness on all those fortunate
enough to possess it.