Ask Lemmy

You've set off something in the woodworker's side of my brain.

There's a style of furniture called Arts & Crafts. The Arts & Crafts movement was bigger than furniture, but in the furniture world there was kind of a clap back at both ostentatious Victorian furniture a la Chippendale, and the mass produced crap the industurial revolution brought forth. So a style of well built, hand made furniture arose. The joinery was often exposed and in fact celebrated as features of the piece; through tenons would stand out proud, pinned joints would be done in contrasting wood exposed on the face side of the piece. I've heard it described as "in your face joinery." The intention is to say "Look at this table. This table was not manufactured in a factory, it was built in a workshop. Look. At. It." In the United States this movement often went for an aesthetic reminiscent of the furniture and fittings of old Spanish missions, so over here we often call it Mission furniture.

Compare this to the shaker style of furniture. The shakers were a sect of Christianity who were so celibate that men and women were required to use separate staircases, which is why this paragraph is largely written in the past tense. They led very modest lives in communal villages, and were known for their simple and yet extremely well made wooden furniture. A shaker table is the universal prototype table. It has legs, a top, and whatever apron or other structure is required to hold it together. Decoration was often limited to choosing pleasing proportions and maybe tapering the legs. I think a shaker craftsman would see the exposed joinery of the Mission style as sinfully prideful.