How is Furniture Made?

How is furniture made?

The days when each piece of furniture was carefully assembled by an artisan are long gone. Nowadays, most pieces of furniture are industrially made which means that most of the work is done by the machines rather than the human hand because the machines can produce considerably larger amounts of furniture at a lower cost. Mass produced furniture is not necessarily inferior to the traditionally made furniture, while its quality and aesthetic appeal depend on quality of materials used and the quality of the manufacturing process itself.

Following the rise of the consumer society, the quality of most products declined dramatically and furniture is no exception. In order to encourage the consumers to continue to buy new products including furniture, the latter is no longer made to last for decades. This, however, does not necessarily mean that all pieces of furniture on the market are cheaply made. Unfortunately, most of them are but it is also possible to find high quality mass produced furniture. In addition, handcrafted furniture has not completely disappeared from the market either.

How furniture is made primarily depends on its type - industrial production or handcrafting. In the first case, most of the work is done by the machines which cut the pieces of wood or other material used to set dimensions and in the end, pack them into cardboard boxes to facilitate transportation to both the retail stores and from the stores to the buyers. They always come with easy-to-follow instructions how to assemble the pieces together enabling the buyers to assemble them by themselves although the most complicated pieces of furniture sometimes require a professional assembly or/and installation. Handcrafted furniture is usually assembled by the woodworker before or after purchase.

Some pieces of mass produced furniture may include a small amount of handcrafting, while handmade furniture typically is not entirely handcrafted. Most woodworkers use power tools and various machines and in some cases, handcrafted furniture is only manually assembled, while the rest is done by the machines. Although handmade furniture is traditionally considered superior over the mass produced one, it is not impossible for the industrially made furniture to look more visually appealing than handmade furniture. This is due to the fact that the latter exclusively depends on expertise and manual skills of the woodworker which sometimes are not as high as they are supposed to be. In addition, handcrafted furniture is typically made by independent artisans or small woodworking shops who cannot afford as accurate and precise machines as large furniture making companies.

A special category is the so-called custom made furniture. Unlike mass produced and handcrafted furniture, custom furniture is made according to specific requests of the buyer in order to provide a perfect fit and meet the buyer’s specific needs and taste for aesthetic appeal. This type of furniture is particularly desired among the consumers but only a few decide for this option because it is usually more expensive than both mass produced and handmade furniture.

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