King Tut's furniture
bill tindall
>Had occasion to visit the King Tut exhibition in Fort Lauderdale. I went for the gold, and that was ok, but I was most impressed by the furniture. Chairs, trunks and tables were constructed with sophisitcated joinery- M&T, dovetail, frame and panel, mitered joints, etc. Surfaces were smooth and bright. A chair bottom was woven with "cane(of some sort)" just as demonstrated in a recent club meeting on modern chair caneing. No idea what they had for tools then and the person at the museum didn't either. Carvings were clearly rasped/filed with something. Flat surfaces could have been planed, if they had planes. Plenty of torn grain around grain irregularities. Some things never change!
Some of the wood had a cedar look while other parts looked like oak or hickory, but likely wasn't. Finishes were paint or a black resin, unless it was gold leafed.
From my limited exposure to things antique, it seems that it took 2500 years for European furniture to reach this level of refinement. From what I have seen of castle furniture, it doesn't look as comfortable.
