Basic Furniture Material

Throughout history, the furniture industry has relied heavily on wood and wood-based materials. Furniture has evolved from simple utilitarian objects made to support people and inanimate objects to article that are designed and built with both functional and aesthetic characteristics and intended for display as well as utility. The origin and development of furniture can be traced to an innate human desire to provide for comfort and convenience as well to display wealth, social and political status, or power. Furniture is made from many materials, from rattan to precious metals, but from the earliest recorded history to the present, the dominant material chosen for constructing furniture is wood. Wood furniture was present in the ancient culture of China, Egypt and Greece. Historic research indicates that early Egyptian furniture was constructed from the indigenous woods of acacia, almond, fig, palm, willow and poplar and also from exotic woods of ebony, cedar, ash, beech, oak, yew, and cypress. Although much of this early furniture has not survived, the dry climate of the Egyptian pyramids has provided numerous examples of ancient wooden furniture.

The reasons for selecting wood as a preferred material for furniture are much the same now as they were thousands of years ago. Woods excels in performance, manufacturing, and appearance characteristics. From the consumer's point of view, wood has a pleasing appearance, is warm to the touch, and is strong and durable. From a manufacturer's point of view, wood has many positive attributes: a favorable strength-to-weight ratio; easily worked with a wide variety of tools to make artistic and functional shapes; easier to join to other pieces of wood or other materials to enhance or modify its natural appearance; common and available near population and manufacturing centers; and a renewable resource.

Wood continues to be overwhelming choice of customers, who often identify the most important attributes to be reliability, environment friendliness, pleasing appearance, and good value. Evidence suggest that the wood industry has an opportunity to capture environmentally informed consumer by providing certified wood that is produced according to accepted standards of environmentally sustainable management; the consumer's perception of enviromental impacts is beginning to influence the manufacturer's choice of materials.