some observations on Chinese drawers ... and the meaning of life
Chinese furniture is an enigma. It ranges from palace to regional to rustic. It can be exquisitely decorated inside and out or plain. The finest dresser I have seen was in fact an indoor chicken coop! However, in spite of this enormous range there is one thing missing ... it's what we would call fine furniture.
I have looked closely at furniture in palaces in museums and, other than decoration, it is to the same design and form as the furniture I bought in quiet rural villages.
The joinery is fairly standard but so beautifully designed and (usually) made that so much very old furniture has survived the years, tumult and enormous variations in temperature and humidity.
The enigma to me however is that, inspite of this complex joinery making the structure so strong and elegant, the 'additions' such as doors and drawers look like they've been thrown on from a great distance and seldom fit!
On my coffee table the drawers were obviously a much later addition and made by someone who roughly copied either the original drawers or some others close at hand.
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Looking closely at the existing drawers and presuming they have some features of the original drawers, I decided to copy and improve rather than ignore. The interesting features are the depth of the front dovetails and the unusual joinery at the back to capture the drawer back and provide runners that guide the drawers into their housing.
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I checked some of my other stored (= stacked under the deck!) furniture and found even more extreme examples of the deep front dovetails. The drawer opening is much wider than the drawer, there are traditionally no drawer runners and the drawer flops around until the drawer front nests into the flared drawer opening
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These drawers also showed that the method of fixing the drawer back and providing a lead-in runner is quite common
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so I figured a couple of thousand years of experience probably had the jump on what my Grandfather showed me so I made a 21st Century version of the drawer except I have made it to fill the opening and work with lateral guides so that the drawer front will sit inside the opening but a raised panel aligns with the front face
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I slightly modified the back joinery as I found so many variations even within my own collection. I will now be making all of my drawer backs like this. With handtools only and virtually no marking out, it is very quick, very strong and self aligning ..... sorry Grandad
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I hope to finish and mount the drawers on the weekend and then start the brackets between the aprons and legs. I may have found standard drawer joinery ... but the range of decoration is huge ... and it has meaning. I don't want to 'say' the wrong thing!
fletty