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Plenty of high end furniture has secondary timbers of different species sometimes its lesser or cheaper quality. Most furniture is built that way . There is a period with Aussie furniture where all the wood was Red Cedar , exterior and interior. This was after 1788 or when they started using it, after it was discovered, to 1850 roughly . Its seen on better quality and common stuff in this period.Quote:
Originally Posted by peterlonz
That is absolutely correct. The other interesting thing is that today, we think of veneered furniture as being lower quality because it is veneered on rubbish board, but back then the very best furniture was almost always veneered at least in part.
The 2-3 mm thick veneers were hand-sawn from choice-figured timber glued onto solid timber using hide glue. Sometimes the solid timber was the same species e.g. Huon Pine on Huon Pine or cedar on cedar, but sometimes the carcass was a different, cheaper and more readily available timber. Exceptions to the veneering rule are found with Blackwood, although in the best pieces that was string-inlaid.
Functional furniture used in kitchens and the private rooms (by definition not the best as that was reserved for drawing rooms, libraries and dining rooms - the rooms open to visitors) was not veneered or inlaid as it was often scrubbed bare to keep it clean and then just waxed.