Cabinet making

A cabinet is a box-shaped piece of furniture with doors or drawers for storing miscellaneous items. Some cabinets stand alone while others are built into a wall or are attached to it like a medicine cabinet. Cabinets are typically made of wood or, now increasingly, of synthetic materials. Commercial grade cabinets, which differ in the materials used, are called casework.

Cabinets usually have one or more doors on the front, which are mounted with door hardware, and occasionally a lock. Many cabinets have doors and drawers or only drawers. Short cabinets often have a finished surface on top that can be used for display, or as a working surface, such as the countertops found in kitchens.

A cabinet intended for clothing storage is usually called a wardrobe or an armoire, or (in some countries) a closet if built in.

Before the advent of industrial design, cabinet makers were responsible for the conception and the production of any piece of furniture. In the last half of the 18th century, cabinet makers, such as Thomas Sheraton, Thomas Chippendale, Shaver and Wormley Bros. Cabinet Constructors, and George Hepplewhite, also published books of furniture forms. These books were compendiums of their designs and those of other cabinet makers.

With the industrial revolution and the application of steam power to cabinet making tools, mass production techniques were gradually applied to nearly all aspects of cabinet making, and the traditional cabinet shop ceased to be the main source of furniture, domestic or commercial. In parallel to this evolution there came a growing demand by the rising middle class in most industrialised countries for finely made furniture. This eventually resulted in a growth in the total number of traditional cabinet makers.

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Wikipedia