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| Frame-and-panel construction is ubiquitous to woodworking — why is that so? Details, from the arched top rail shown at right to the subtle mitered corners on the shoulder line (left), are factors in the equation. In this article, our author offers his thoughts on the subject. |
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Like the wheel, the exact beginnings and development of the frame-and-panel in Europe are not well documented. What few pieces of furniture that remain from 1200 to late 1400 show us that the idea of joining wood parts using mortise-and-tenon joinery was clearly understood. The idea, then, of making the frame of a frame-and-panel piece using the joint which comes into being during that period wasn't a ground-breaking notion. What is surprising is that although furniture making was in its infancy, instead of the parts being plain and simple as you might expect of "beginning furniture makers", they were carved in the most elaborate manner. This carving and piercing mirrors the architecture of the period.
The most advanced craft of the period was stonemasonry. A look at the complexity and quality of masonry on churches and cathedrals attests to the stonemasons' skill and development. This leaves me to believe that some, if not all, of the early pieces of furniture were in fact made by cross-over stonemasons, who would find forming and shaping wood a breeze when compared to carving stone.
Building Block of Furniture Making
The key to furniture making advancement was solving the problem of allowing wood to shrink and expand across the grain as it responds to changes in relative humidity. The solution was a panel that sits loose within a groove inside a strong frame. You could view the development of the frame-and-panel as the building block of furniture making. Any sort of furniture from chests to chairs could now be made with reasonable expectation that they would survive the stress of seasonal wood movement. The understanding of this simple technique signals the birth of furniture designers and makers as specialists amongst all the other woodworking specialists of the time, from wheelwrights to coachbuilders from shipwrights to carpenters. The furniture maker was not starting from scratch. He freely borrowed any woodworking technique or method that would assist in his endeavors, the draw peg being a good example. This period marks the beginning of our furniture making heritage.
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| Which design would you choose? In the three examples above, only the frame dimension is changed (the groove, bead and slope are held constant), which inevitably affects the center field. Imagine the multitude of effects that could be made if you were to change all five elements, thereby affecting pattern, highlights, shadows and proportion. |
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As well as in furniture, the frame- and-panel was used by carpenters as a solution to finishing the interior walls of rooms — a tradition that has stayed with us through the ages. Today, a solid wood frame-and-panel interior would be beyond the budget of most, whereas painted plywood and medium density fiberboard (MDF) solutions are affordable and doable by most woodworkers.
Today's frame-and-panels are still made of solid wood but a greater volume are made using dimensionally stable manufactured materials — a quirky anomaly. The tools used to make the latter have altered as radically as the materials.
Before I present an overview of these developments, I should explain why the frame-and-panel commands such enduring appeal. Implicit in the explanation is how important it is for you as a furniture maker to understand the elements that make up this most practical building block of furniture making. When you design and build a frame-and-panel structure, you are the one setting the visual rules. Your decisions, large and small, ultimately will determine what the finished piece will look like.
Frame-and-panel Appeal
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| This MDF panel was made on a CNC machine. Used ever-more frequently today, it is often finished with paint or a vinyl material. Seen in this raw state we can focus on the visual content of frame-and-panel elements without getting sidetracked by how they're made. |
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MDF has two attributes that we constantly seek in solid wood: it's dimensionally stable (won't shrink or expand) and it remains flat (won't distort). So why would you want to alter it? It would do the job just fine as a flat surface yet; as you see in the photo shown at left, it has been routed with a frame-and-panel pattern. Why is this more interesting than the plain board?
First, the routing makes a pattern on the board. Second, the pattern is cut into the board, producing highlights and shadows. Pattern, highlights and shadows are at the core of furniture design. In this simple panel they have been reduced to just five elements, making it easier to analyze their appearance and appeal.
The Pattern
Its lines follow the architecture of the panel. It doesn't make a lot of demands on us relative to the outer shape: it sits comfortably within it. The machine that made it could as easily have turned the routed pattern 45°. That would have introduced a set of triangles and a lot of lines that had a complex relationship with the outside shape. However, even as it stands it's not that simple when we analyze deeper. It has five elements: the frame; the groove; the bead; the slope; and the center field. We can look at the pattern by drawing it on paper. However, in the made object the pattern becomes more complex because it also has depth, which creates highlights and shadows and which themselves vary according to the intensity and direction of the light. And that matters because it's from the highlights and shadows that we understand the shapes of anything that we are looking at.
Frame-and-panel Aesthetic
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In this piece made by the author, the English brown oak panels captured by ebonized ash frames were formed to create strong highlights and shadows. The design emphasizes the vertical lines of the piece without intruding upon the width of the panel or disrupting the grain pattern.
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The first thing to note is that wherever the flat surface gives way to change in height or form, a line is made. However slight that change from flat may be, it produces a shadow or a highlight depending on where the light is coming from. (Slight digression: If you look at where the outer frames gives way to the groove, the shadow is well-defined. Now look at where the slope gives way to the center field. There is no step, therefore no shadow, just a change in tonal value (same color, different hue). Moral: If you want to define the shape, the smallest vertical change, say, 1/32", is more effective than no step.)
Let's now look at the five elements one to the other. Do they sit comfortably together? Is any element too big or too small? What changes would make the panel more dramatic or attractive? How would a double bead look? How would a rise between slope and center field look? We could, of course, change any one or all of the five elements. Any change affects the whole.
This relationship between parts is called proportion, another key element of furniture design. Rarely when we make anything are there only five elements. That means the proportion of part to part and part to whole only gets more complex. So as we concern ourselves with the technicalities of making the frame-and-panel — which joint, which cutter — it's important to realize that our decisions have a direct bearing on the aesthetic outcome. It's impossible to make without also being responsible for the design.
The simplest form and frame-and-panel is a single panel sitting inside a frame — the sort of thing you see on the typical kitchen cabinet door. But the system can be designed to be much more complex by the use of vertical and horizontal frame members inside the frame with many panels. Panels put together to form a box can be used to make casegoods — cabinets, storage furniture, and so on. These simple elements can quickly get very complex.