Carving

There are examples of furniture carving in Egypt at the time of the pyramids: animal legs of cedarwood on biers, beds, and chairs; and ducks’ heads terminating the legs of folding stools. Elegant carved headrests took the place of pillows in this hot climate.

Whereas carving does not appear to have played a significant part in Greek and Roman furniture, it was a dominant feature of European furniture of the Middle Ages. The fronts of chests bear Gothic perpendicular tracery (decorative interlacing of lines) in imitation of the decorative stonework found in ecclesiastical architecture.

Another source of inspiration for carved ornaments in bourgeois furniture was the ecclesiastical wood carving found in choir stalls and altarpieces. The art of the wood-carver also flourished in Islam during the Middle Ages, especially in kiosks (open pavilions), oriel (large bay windows projecting from the wall and supported by brackets) windows, and Qurʾān lecterns. The most original and remarkable form of medieval carved ornamentation was the linenfold, which resembled folded sheets of linen laid on the surface of the wood. Although the motif was widely known, its origins are obscure.

During the Renaissance, wood-carvers changed motifs: new ornamental riches, partly inspired by the forms of Classical antiquity, began to adorn cupboards and chests. Acanthus leaf designs, strapwork (narrow bands folded, crossed, and sometimes interlaced), Moresque designs, the auricular (resembling a flowered Alpine primrose) style, bunches of fruit, and scrollwork for over a hundred years dominated the figure-carving repertoires of European cabinetmakers.

During the 17th century the fashion for carved work at first receded but came to the fore again in the console tables (tables designed to fit against the wall), mirror frames, and high-backed chairs of Court Baroque. In striking contrast to lacquer cabinets of Japan, sumptuous, gilded carved work became popular on the stands invariably made for them when they were imported to Europe.

In the 18th century, wood-carvers enjoyed a final splendid period of prosperity when the Rococo style of ornamentation called for the plastic effects obtainable through carving. Whole panels of woodwork, doors, mirror frames, chairs, and settees were adorned with the finest wood carving, featuring combinations of mussel-shell patterns and naturalistic vines and plant tendrils. Even in English furniture of more sober design there were ample opportunities for carved work; for example, in the many chairback variations in the Chippendale manner.

American cabinetmakers were particularly skillful at carving block fronts (the sides curving forward and the middle receding) on the drawers of chests of drawers, and the English at making tea tables with piecrust (scalloped) tops.

Turned work

Turning is a process by which parts of furniture, such as legs and posts, are shaped while turning on a lathe. Turned work is found on Greco-Roman furniture. It is not certain whether the technique was actually employed in Egyptian furniture, though some members look as though they might have been turned. It was particularly in the shaping of wooden chair legs that Greek joiners used the lathe; the same sharp edges and deep molding seem to be repeated in the legs of bronze furniture. It is possibly ancient turned work traditions upheld in Byzantium that are reflected in certain chairs of medieval form found, for example, in Norway; made of pinewood, the construction consists principally of turned staves (thin bars), some with appendant loose rings, some of them fluted (grooved). Similar turned chairs were made in Wales in the 16th century. In the 17th century, turned work was concentrated on pillars for cupboards and on ball feet but is also seen on chair and table legs, on which rich variations involving twisted and intertwining forms occur. Turned work in ivory also flourished in the 17th century. Except for the Windsor chair, or stick-back, however, the craft of the turner played no significant role in English high style furniture of the 18th century; it is similarly alien to French Rococo furniture.

Inlay and marquetry

Inlaid woodwork, in which decorative material such as wood or ivory is set into the surface of the veneer, has accompanied the art of furniture making for thousands of years. Ivory inlay can be seen in Egyptian furniture, particularly in small, meticulously executed toilet caskets, but it is difficult to locate in Greek and Roman furniture, today known almost exclusively from pictorial representations.

In medieval Europe, inlay work gave way to wood carving and then experienced a rich period of development during the Renaissance in Italy. Italian intarsia (mosaic of wood) work found particular favour in panels over the backs of choir stalls and in the private studies and chapels, or oratories, of princes. An intarsia study of the Duke of Urbino, an Italian nobleman and patron of the arts, is still preserved in the palace of Urbino, and a corresponding room, originally at Gubbio, is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Together with illusionism, linear perspective (the technique of representing on a plane or curved surface the spatial relation of objects as they might appear to the eye), which had just been discovered, achieved triumphs in Italian intarsia work.

Ivory was used on both Renaissance and Baroque cupboards, sparingly to begin with, lavishly later on. Inlay work was especially used in the many splendid German and French cabinets of the period. In the Netherlands and England an extremely rich form of marquetry (patterns formed by the insertion of pieces of wood, shell, ivory, or metal into the wood veneer) was developed, incorporating floral motifs in various kinds of exotic wood on walnut. English grandfather clocks made around 1700 often had richly inlaid cases. It was in France, however, during the Rococo period especially that inlay work reached unprecedented levels of quality. The serpentine sides and fronts of commodes were veneered with costly woods whose often relatively simple grain patterns formed an effective background for richly ornamented mounts of gilded bronze.