ABSTRACT
Cabinet-making is the one generic term applied to the manufacture of every description of furniture. Upholstery is, however, a distinct art or handicraft, dealing with different materials. The cabinet-maker is a pure wood-worker; and that, perhaps, of the very highest order. Being generally engaged upon the most expensive woods, his work is required to be of the most fmished and tasty description. The art is constantly calling forth a very high exercise of skill, ingenuity, and invention. It is a trade which perhaps, more intimately than any other, is mixed up with the nne arts. Marqueterie is mosaic work in wood; as wood-carving, in its higher branches, is sculpture in wood. The upholsterers, who confme themselves to their own proper branch, are the fitters-up of curtains and their hangings, either for beds or windows; they are also the stuffers of the chair and sofa cushions, and the makers of carpets and of beds; that is to say, they are the tradesmen who, in the language of the craft, "do the soft work" - or in other words, all connected with the cabinet -maker's art in which woven materials are the staplP.
