The art of furniture building in ancient china was a highly venerated practice and implicated a great deal of joinery that took years of experience to master.
Glue was not relied upon as it is now for wood construction since it was not as strong and would lose adhesiveness quickly due to climate change. For this reason, intricate non-glue joinery became a skill that was used for the construction of hardwood furniture, particularly tables and desks as these were used by respected scholars. These desks would be artfully crafted and boast intricate joinery as well as beautiful aesthetics.
Desks were built most often in two parts: the legs and the top. The most common and basic leg building technique was the “recessed-leg”. This construction method relates closely to traditional post-and-beam construction as it employs legs joined at points recessed from the corners of a mitered frame and then connected by various pieces that also act aesthetically.
The top of the desk is a frame-and-panel construction. It consists of a frame that is joined at mitered edges with a mortise-and-tenon joint. The panel has a tongue along its outer edges that slides into a corresponding groove along the frame allowing it to slide following expansion or contraction of the frame. Additional braces run horizontally along the shorter span and are also dovetail joined into the frame to prevent warping and to make it more structurally sound.
The intricate construction of Chinese furniture relates well to ancient architectural practices and is even alluded to in the common construction methods of today such as one-way slabs and post-and-beam construction. The fact that furniture makers were masters who learned through years of experience and transferred their knowledge through generations has lead to much of the knowledge we have now on building methods and practices.
Julien Hébert
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