Glossary
of Upholstery, Furnishing and Soft Furnishing Terms
Updated 08/04/08
|
Glossary
of Upholstery, Furnishing and Soft Furnishing Terms |
| Algerian Fibre: | A type
of fibre used in bedding or upholstery. Palm leaves which are shredded into filaments, dried, and curled, come into this country in the form of rope. Its natural colour is green, but it is boiled and dyed black to repel mites. |
| Antimacassar: | A detached covering
for backs of chairs and settees originally intended as a protection against macassar oil. |
| Armchair: | Originally called an
arming chair to distinguish from a single or side chair, armless single chair or back stool. |
| Back-tacking: | Method of attaching
covering to conceal tacking on outside arms and backs.(See also tacking strips) |
| Ball and Claw: | A carved wooden reproduction
of a paw resting on a ball for feet of furniture. |
| Banquette: | A long continuous seat. |
| Bergere: | Bergere: Louis XIV or XV style chair with upholstered back and sides with squab cushion. Modern designs have cane sides and backs. |
| Bias cutting: | Bias cutting: Cutting fabric diagonally across threads. |
| Biblefront: | A bold rounded edge to front of seat. |
| Blind stitch: | Stitches formed with twine to consolidate filling. |
| Bolster Arm: | Bolster Arm: A term
used to describe the cylindrical arm rest of certain easy chairs because of the resemblance to bolsters. |
| Bottoming: | Bottoming: A coarse woven cloth of natural or synthetic yarn, sometimes dyed black placed over webs on bottom of chairs |
| Box Ottoman: | Box Ottoman: A divan
or couch without back or arms with a hinged lid forming a seat. The interior is used for bedding, etc. |
| Border: | Border: The boxing or walls of a cushion or mattress. |
| Braid: | Braid: Narrow woven material used to decorate upholstery & curtains. |
| Bridle ties: | Bridle ties: Loops of twine to hold filling in place. |
| Burlap: | Burlap: See Hessian. |
| BSI: | BSI: British Standards Institution. |
| Brocade: | “A stuff of gold,
silver or silk, raised and enriched with flowers, foliages, or other ornaments
according to the fancy of the merchant or manufacturers who invented the
new fashions” (Postlethwayt). Eighteenth century definition of brocade referred to textiles with supplementary pattern wefts secured into the main ground weave. The supplementary wefts cover only the patterned and are not carried from selvedge to selvedge. Present day, Machine made brocade the colourd pattern wefts run from selvedge to selvedge. |
| Brocatelle: | A patterned fabric with a linen or cotton weft and a silk warp. The warp forming the design and the weft the background, giving the cloth an embossed effect |
| Buttoning: | Method of forming deep diamond shapes with carefully positioned buttons. |
| Calico: | A plain weave (tabby)
cloth of various weights available either bleached or unbleached Used in upholstery mainly for covering the second stuffing. |
| Carding: | The breaking down or teasing of upholstery stuffing fibres. |
| Chaise Longue: | A French term for a couch or day bed with an upholstered back. |
| Chamfer: | To cut or grind a flat surface at an angle, as along the edge of seat frames. |
| Chipboard: | A particle board chiefly of wood particles bonded together to form a smooth manufactured board of various grades. Its smoothness, flatness and freedom from warping, dimensional stability as well cheapness has made it an essential component of mass market cabinet furniture. It has now been introduced for making frames for inexpensive upholstery, |
| Coil spring: | Steel wire spirals. |
| Collar: | A strip of the covering material sewn to an inside back to provide a pull-in around an arm, or similarly sewn to aseat cover as a pull-in around an arm style. |
| Cored foam: | Foam made with openings
on one side. The weight and resilience is determined by thickness, and by diameter of cores. For reversible cushions, two pieces are glued together with cored sides facing. |
| Corona: | A small tester circular or semi-circular from which bed curtains are hung. |
| Couch: | A long upholstered seat with a back and one or two ends. |
| Cotton wadding: | Cotton felt used to
cover loose upholstery fillings to create a soft smooth surface. Available in rolls or by the yard; thickness is determined by weight per yard. |
| Cramp: | A device used in the manufacture or repair of frames to draw and hold a joint together. |
| Deck: | See Seat Platform |
| Doming: | Degree of rise in centre of seat or cushion. |
| Double cone spring: | A spring with a large
top and bottom coil and narrow waist Also called hour-glass. Spring. Used for suspension in traditional upholstery |
| Dowels: | Wooden pegs glued
into pre-drilled holes to form furniture frame joint. |
| Drop in seat: | A loose seat to fit into rebate of dining chair or bedroom stool. |
| Easy chair: | Originally the name given to winged upholstered armchairs, now applied to upholstered arm-chairs generally. The seat is usually 13” (33cms) – 16” (40.6cms) high, 21” (53.3cms) –23”( 58.5cms) deep, and at least 19” (48cms) wide. |
| Flax: | A strong lustrous bast fibre taken from the flax plant formed into a yarn, from which linen is woven. . |
| Fillets: | Additional small pieces of timber added to frame |
| Float buttoning: | The use of buttons followed the use of tufts. |
| Float tufting: | Tufts lightly pulled down into the cover of seats and backs of chairs and sofa to produce slight indentations. A form of decoration used from 16th to 18th century. |
| Fly: | A hidden extension of a cheaper or waste piece of material stitched to final cover, to reduce the amount of covering material required.. |
| Fullness: | Surplus covering causing wrinkling. |
| Galloon: | An old name for various kinds of braid used in upholstery. |
| Gauge: | Thickness of wire used
to make spiral springs, the lowest number representing the thickest wire and the highest number the finest. |
| Genoa velvet: | A figured furnishing
velvet with a satin base and a multicoloured pile. |
| Gimp: | Narrow woven tape
used to cover tacks and raw edges on show wood furniture. |
| Gimp pins: | Gimp pins: Small fine pins with flat heads to hold gimp in place as well as for delicate areas where attack would be too heavy. |
| Glass paper: | An abrasive
preparation using glass as the abrasive. Used to smooth the surface of timber.. |
| Gutter: | A channel formed in the spring canvas across the width of a sprung seat between the spring edge and the springs in the bed of the seat. |
| Helical spring: | A small close wound small diameter elongated spring used to clip together the conical springs of a bed spring. |
| Hessian: | A woven cloth made linen but more often jute, sometimes called canvas. Woven 183 cms (72”) wide specifically for upholstery purposes. |
| Join: | A machine -stitched seam used to connect two pieces of fabric. |
| Jute: | A fibre of an Indian
plant of the genus Corchorus Spun into a yarn. Used for manufacture of hessian. |
| KD (knock down) | Furniture made in separate parts for ease of transport. |
| Laid cord: | Heavy cord made from
flax or hemp fibre for lashing springs. 'Laid' refers to the method of manufacture that makes the cord stretch - resistant. |
| Lashing: | The lacing and knotting
together of spring coils with laid cord to prevent movement. |
| Laminated webbing: | Rubber webbing with rayon threads within layers of rubber. |
| Latex: | Foam manufactured from natural rubber. |
| Lead moulding: | Trimming for leather upholstery to hide tacks or gimp pins. |
| Lip: | Front edge of cushion seat. |
| Metaline nails: | Enamel-coated round headed tacks used for fastening plastic or leather corners. Some have flaired or flattened edges for use on plastics or light fabrics to prevents cutting the material. |
| Mock cushion: | Construction of seat to imitate a cushion. |
| Mortice, mortise: | Hole cut into timber to accommodate a tenon (projection) to form a mortice and tenon joint. |
| Pin-stuffed: | An upholstery seat using one layer of filling only. |
| Pincers: | A tool sometimes used
to extract small tacks and staples from furniture frames. |
| Piping: | A narrow strip of fabric folded around a cord and sewn into a seam. |
| Prie-Dieu chair: | A chair with a low seat and a high back with a padded narrow shelf at the top. The user kneeling on the seat with arms resting on the padded cross member (shelf) when praying. |
| Pull-over edge: | A seat front edge with covering 'pulled' straight over. |
| Rebate: | A recess or groove cut near the edge of the frame to support drop-in seat or to provide a tacking area. |
| Refurbishing: | Repairing or renewing. |
| Regulator: | An upholsterers metal tool with a point at one end and flat at the other, chiefly used to adjust stuffing |
| Ripping: | The stripping of the cover and/or upholstery from a frame |
| Roll edge: | See Tack Roll |
| Ruche: | A decorative trimming with a heading and a cut or a looped surface. Used in place of piping around cushions and edges. |
| Sash cramp: | See Cramp |
| Scrim: | A woven fabric made from rounded flax or jute yarn used for covering 1st stuffings of upholstered furniture. |
| Seat Platform: | An area on top of the seat upon which the seat cushion is placed |
| Serpentine spring: | Continuous wire upholstery suspension spring formed as a zigzag strip. Eliminating the need for webs. |
| Show-wood chair: | An upholstered frame with polished wood showing. |
| Silencer: | A strip of webbing or sturdy material placed between the lower coil of a spring and the frame to prevent the depressed spring hitting the wood. |
| Single cone spring: | A spring with large top coil tapering to the base. |
| Sinuous spring: | See Serpentine spring. |
| Skewers: | Long upholsterers' pins with a ring at the end. |
| Skivering: | Shaving the underside of leather to reduce its thickness. |
| Slipping thread: | Fine linen thread used for slip stitching. |
| Sofa: | The term appears in the late years of the 17th century as a "a couch for reclining" (1692). |
| Spring Canvas: | A tightly woven heavyweight hessian with flat threads used for covering springs |
| Spring edge: | A flexible edge for seats or backs. |
| Squab: | A flat firmly-stuffed cushion. |
| Stile: | An upright part of frame construction.. |
| Stitched edge: | A firm walled edge around the exposed contours of the upholstery, formed by blind and top stitches moulding the first stuffing.. |
| Stuffing ties: | Running stitches through the first stuffing cover (scrim) to keep first stuffing in place. |
| Stuffover chair: | Chair with upholstered seat back and arms.. |
| SWG: | SWG: Standard wire gauge. |
| Tack roll: | Tack roll: A firm edge made with hessian or scrim rolled tightly around a hair or fibre core and secured with tacks to the edge of the frame. |
| Tack ties: | Tack ties: Lines mainly in fine silk materials caused by tacks or staples nipping a weft thread when covering an item. |
| Tacking strips: | Tacking strips: Narrow cardboard strips hidden under the top of the outside back and outside arm cover that allows a straight edge to be seen.. |
| Tarpaulin: | See Spring Canvas |
| Temporary tacking: | To lightly secure material so that it can easily be adjusted. |
| Tenon: | A joinery term for a projecting end of wood shaped to fit into a corresponding cavity (mortise) in another piece of wood to form a joint. |
| Terylene: | A man-made polyester fibre |
| Tester: | The top framework of a four poster bed. |
| Top Stuffed: | Top stuffed interior upholstery applied to top surface of seat members only and not within the frame. |
| Trestles: | Saw horses built with
padded tops with raised edges so that furniture will not slip off or be scratched. |
| Tuck in: | Access between seat
back and inside arm, where fabric tucks out of sight |
| Tufts: | Several loops of silk,
wool, or cotton yarn each approximately 2.5cms (1”) in length, tied at the centre. |
| Twine: | A form of cord for use in upholstery made from flax or hemp. |
| Under the edge: | An overlapping roll at the front of the seat. |
| Unit spring: | An assembly of springs to fit a seat or back. |
| Vandyking: | A method of hiding joins in the covering material when deep buttoning.. |
| Warp: | Threads running down length of fabric, parallel to selvedge. |
| Webbing: | Strips woven from jute
fibre to provide support for suspensions and/or filling materials. |
| Weft: | Threads running across width of fabric from selvedge to selvedge. |
| Well: | A depression formed behind the spring edge of a cushion seat |
| Welt: | See Piping.. |