SOME HISTORY ABOUT CABINET MAKING

With the industrial revolution and the application of steam power to cabinet making tools, mass production techniques were gradually applied to nearly all aspects of cabinet making, and the traditional cabinet shop ceased to be the main source of furniture, domestic or commercial. In parallel to this evolution there came a growing demand by the rising middle class in most industrialized countries for finely made furniture. This eventually resulted in a growth in the total number of traditional cabinet makers.

Before 1650, fine furniture was a rarity in Western Europe and North America. Generally, people did not need it and for the most part could not afford it. They made do with simple but serviceable pieces. The arts and craft movement which started in the United Kingdom in the middle of the 19th century spurred a market for traditional cabinet making, and other craft goods. It rapidly spread to the United States and to all the countries in the British Empire. This movement exemplified the reaction to the eclectic historicism of the Victorian era and to the 'soulless' machine-made production which was starting to become widespread.

After World War II woodworking became a popular hobby among the middle classes. The more serious and skilled amateurs in this field now turn out pieces of furniture which rival the work of professional cabinet makers. Together, their work now represents but a small percentage of furniture production in any industrial country, but their numbers are vastly greater than those of their counterparts in the 18th century and before.

There are several schools of popular cabinet design still in use today, such as Scandinavian, French Provincial, Rustic, Mission style, Oriental, and Shaker. Scandinavian design is characterized by clean horizontal and vertical lines, with a distinct absence of ornamentation. It has been popularized in recent years by one large Scandinavian furniture corporation that has made its furniture easily available all over the world.

Unlike Scandinavian cabinetry, French Provincial focuses on ornamentation. Furniture in this style is often stained and painted to conceal the wood underneath. Wood used in this design varied but was usually beech. Design for Rustic furniture is often very utilitarian and unfinished. Sometimes called log furniture or log cabin design, the cabinets often seek to feature the wood in its natural state with grain, wood characteristics, and sometimes even the bark of the tree, clearly visible. Wood used in this cabinetry is often mountainous wood such as pine, spruce, and cedar.
 

Popularized by the Arts and Crafts movement, Mission style furniture became popular in the early 20th century and is credited to have begun in the Bay Area of San Francisco. Mission style features strait, thick panels and vertical and horizontal lines. Hardware is often made of dark iron and is featured visibly on the outside of the cabinets. For cabinet makers, white oak is the material of choice.

Oriental design features simplicity and elegance. The color red is often used and landscape art and Asian characters are also commonly featured. With the assimilation and interest in Asian influence and culture in the West in recent years, this design has become very popular. Shaker furniture, because its origins are in an egalitarian religious community, its design focuses on function rather than artistic expression. Shaker cabinetry is characterized by simplicity and symmetry.

In our modern world, there are countless options in both manufactured and traditional cabinet making. To those who value and desire it, the skill and attention of early master cabinet makers is still alive and available today.

A cabinet may be built-in or free-standing. A built-in cabinet is usually custom made for a particular situation and it is fixed into position, on a floor, against a wall, or framed in an opening. For example modern kitchens are examples of built-in cabinetry. Free-standing cabinets are more commonly available as off-the-shelf items and can be moved from place to place if required. Cabinets may be wall hung or suspended from the ceiling.

Cabinets may have a face frame or may be of frameless construction (also known as European or euro-style). Modern cabinetry is often frameless and is typically constructed from man-made sheet materials, such as plywood, chipboard or MDF. The visible surfaces of these materials are usually clad in a timber veneer, plastic laminate, or other material. They may also be painted.
 
Bracket feet Cabinets which rest on the floor are supported by some sort of a base. This base could be a fully enclosed base (i.e. a plinth), a scrolled based, bracket feet or it could be a set of legs.

A relatively new type of adjustable leg has been adopted from the European cabinet system which offers several advantages. First off, in making base cabinets for kitchens, the cabinet sides would be cut to 34 1/2 inches, yielding four cabinet side blanks per 4 foot by 8 foot sheet. Using the adjustable feet, the side blanks are cut to 30 inches, thus yielding six cabinet side per sheet.

These feet can be secured to the bottom of the cabinet by having the leg base screwed onto the cabinet bottom. They can also be attached by means of a hole drilled through the cabinet bottom at specific locations. The legs are then attached to the cabinet bottom by a slotted, hollow machine screw. The height of the cabinet can be adjusted from inside the cabinet, simply by inserting a screwdriver into the slot and turning to raise or lower the cabinet. The holes in the cabinet are capped by plastic inserts, making the appearance more acceptable for residential cabinets. Using these feet, the cabinets need not be shimmed or scribed to the floor for leveling. The toe kick board is attached to the cabinet by means of a clip, which is either screwed onto the back side of the kick board, or a barbed plastic clip is inserted into a saw kerf, also made on the back side of the kick board. This toe kick board can be made to fit each base cabinet, or made to fit a run of cabinets. [5]

Kitchen cabinets, or any cabinet generally at which a person may stand, usually have a fully enclosed base in which the front edge has been set back 75 mm or so to provide room for toes, known as the kick space. A scrolled base is similar to the fully enclosed base but it has areas of the base material removed, often with a decorative pattern, leaving feet on which the cabinet stands. Bracket feet are separate feet, usually attached in each corner and occasionally for larger pieces in the middle of the cabinet.
 

A cabinet usually has at least one compartment. Compartments may be open, as in open shelving; they may be enclosed by one or more doors; or they may contain one or more drawers. Some cabinets contain secret compartments, access to which is generally not obvious. Modern cabinets employ many more complicated means (relative to a simple shelf) of making browsing lower cabinets more efficient and comfortable.

The lazy susan, a shelf which rotates around a central axis, allowing items stored at the back of the cabinet to be brought to the front by rotating the shelf. These are usually used in corner cabinets, which are larger and deeper and have a greater "dead space" at the back than other cabinets.

Another recent development in cabinet inserts or hardware, often taking the place of the lazy susan, particularly in base cabinets is the blind corner cabinet pull out unit. These units pull out and turn, making the attached shelving unit slide into the open area of the cabinet door, thus making the shelves accessible to the user. These units vary greatly in design and cost, but are very practical in making what was once dead space usable.

Other insert hardware is continuously being designed and includes such items as mixer shelves that pull out of a base cabinet and spring into a locked position at counter height. This hardware makes lifting these somewhat heavy mixers and mechanically helping with the process of positioning the unit for use. More and more components are being designed to enable specialized hardware to be used in standard cabinet carcasses.

Most cabinets incorporate a top of some sort. In many cases, the top is merely to enclose the compartments within and serves no other purpose - as in a wall hung cupboard for example. In other cabinets, the top also serves as a work surface - a kitchen countertop for example.

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