- #HTE Furniture Design Reference: Diagrams of 18th...

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Furniture Design Reference: Diagrams of 18th Century Furniture Broken Down Into Its Components

Before the internet, we had encyclopedias. One of the oldest is France’s Encyclopédie from the 18th Century, where editors Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert gamely tried to cram the world’s knowledge into a comprehensive series of volumes. But the funny thing about French people is that they tend to write in French, so for years the University of Michigan has been translating this massive work into English and posting entries on their website as they become available.

The 18th Century was a bit before the time of industrial designers, but we sifted through the Encyclopédie to find the closest related field and came up with furniture design. Within the Menuisier en meubles (“Art of the cabinetmaker”) entry are some twenty plates cataloguing the various parts of fine furniture of the era. Detailed descriptions are nonexistent, but we get to see the components, the joinery, the templates, the weaving patterns of the wicker and even how some of the parts are meant to be cut from the timber:

Plate I: Art of the Cabinet Maker, Seats