Furniture terms and Descriptions

Artificial leather is a fabric or finish intended to substitute for leather in fields such as upholstery, clothing and fabrics

Bicast leather (Bycast leather)
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Bonded leather
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Bonded leather, or reconstituted leather, is an artificial material composed of 80% to 100% leather fibers (often waste scraps from leather tanneries or leather workshops). It consists of collagen fibers obtained from macerated hide pieces bonded together with latex binders constructed into a fibrous mat to create a look and feel similar or sometimes identical to that of genuine leather but at a fraction of the cost. Depending on the quality a man-made pattern is usually discernible as a "grain-like" look.

Examples of products that are most commonly constructed with bonded leather are: bibles, diaries, art books, desk accessories, hymnals, bags, belts, chairs, and sofas.

There are manufacturers who call their chemical treated leather, bonded leather.

Leather Match
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Leather match is when the top areas of an upholstered piece of furniture has real leather on all the parts of the item where the body touches, such as the seat cushions , the seat backs and the tops of the arms.   The areas of the sofa where the body does not touch , such as the back of the sofa, the side and the front lower panels are an Artificial leather to match the real leather as this keeps the cost of the items down and allow for  real leather to be used only where it is needed.

Top Grain Leather
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Full-grain leather or top-grain refers to the upper section of a hide that previously contained the epidermis and hair, but were removed from the hide/skin. Full-grain refers to hides that have not been sanded, buffed or snuffed (otherwise known as corrected) in order to remove imperfections (or natural marks) on the surface of the hide, although is never perfect. The grain remains in its natural state which will allow the best fiber strength, resulting in greater durability. The natural grain also has natural breathability, resulting in greater comfort for clothing. Rather than wearing out, it will develop a natural patina and change in its appearance over time with some cracking and spliting. The finest leather furniture and footwear are made from full-grain leather. For these reasons only the best raw hide are used in order to create full-grain or top-grain leather. Full grain leathers can mainly be bought as two finish types: aniline and semi-aniline.
 

Solids and Veneers

When the term solids and veneers is used to describe the items this reefers to the use of Real solid woods and Wood veneers over MDF or Partical board for the look of real wood with out the high cost of all solid wood construction.   Most items have solid woods on the legs and trim moldings of item but large flat surfaces are typically made with a wood veneer over MDF to keep the cost of the product down and to keep solid flat panels of wood from warping or twisting as a result of heat or moisture in the air.  Veneering on Manufactured woods (MDF, Partical boards) helps prevent warping of twisting on large flat paneled surfaces.


Wood veneer
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In woodworking, veneer refers to thin slices of wood, usually thinner than 3 mm (1/8 inch), that are typically glued onto core panels (typically, wood, particle board or medium density fiberboard) to produce flat panels such as doors, tops and panels for cabinets, parquet floors and parts of furniture. They are also used in marquetry. Plywood consists of three or more layers of veneer, each glued with its grain at right angles to adjacent layers for strength. Veneer beading is a thin layer of decorative edging placed around objects, such as jewelry boxes.

Veneer is obtained either by "peeling" the trunk of a tree or by slicing large rectangular blocks of wood known as flitches. The appearance of the grain and figure in wood comes from slicing through the growth rings of a tree and depends upon the angle at which the wood is sliced. There are three main types of veneer-making equipment used commercially:

• A rotary lathe in which the wood is turned against a very sharp blade and peeled off in one continuous or semi-continuous roll. Rotary-cut veneer is mainly used for plywood, as the appearance is not desirable because the veneer is cut concentric to the growth rings.
• A slicing machine in which the flitch or piece of log is raised and lowered against the blade and slices of the log are made. This yields veneer which looks like sawn pieces of wood, cut across the growth rings.
• A half-round lathe in which the log or piece of log can be turned and moved in such a way to expose the most interesting parts of the grain.

Each slicing processes gives a very distinctive type of grain, depending upon the tree species. In any of the veneer slicing methods, when the veneer is sliced, a distortion of the grain occurs. As it hits the wood, the knife blade creates a "loose" side where the cells have been opened up by the blade, and a "tight" side.

Traditionally, veneers were also sawn, but this is more wasteful of wood. Veneering is an ancient art, dating back to the ancient Egyptians who used veneers on their furniture and sarcophagi

Medium-density fiberboard (Manufactured wood)
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Medium-density fiberboard (MDF) is an engineered wood product formed by breaking down softwood into wood fibres, often in a defibrator, combining it with wax and a resin binder, and forming panels by applying high temperature and pressure.^[1]

It is made up of separated fibers, (not wood veneers) but can be used as a building material similar in application to plywood. It is much more dense than normal particle board.

The name derives from the distinction in densities of fiberboard. Large-scale production of MDF began in the 1980s.