Woodworking is the craft of shaping, joining and finishing wood to make furniture, buildings, tools and decorative objects. It encompasses many specialist trades, including carpentry, joinery, cabinetmaking, chairmaking, turning, carving, coopering and marquetry, each with its own methods and tools.
Until the nineteenth century almost all woodworking was done by hand, with timber sawn, planed and shaped using saws, planes, chisels, gouges and spokeshaves, and joints such as the mortise and tenon and the dovetail cut by eye and skill. Guilds and apprenticeship systems maintained standards, and regional traditions produced distinct styles of country furniture. The Industrial Revolution introduced powered saws, planing machines and routers, allowing furniture to be made in quantity, and machine-cut dovetails and uniform components became common from the later Victorian period. For collectors, understanding woodworking techniques is essential to dating and authenticating furniture: hand-cut joints, irregular saw marks, scribed lines and the way boards have shrunk over time all indicate age. The Arts and Crafts movement championed hand woodworking as a reaction against industrial methods, and traditional techniques remain at the heart of good furniture restoration today.
