Furniture Industry

The global industry that designs, manufactures and sells furniture, objects built to support human activities such as seating, eating, storage, working and sleeping, traditionally worked in wood but increasingly also in metal and plastic. Furniture making using woodworking joints reflecting local traditions dates back tens of thousands of years, and the industry took on a recognizably modern, mass market shape in the eighteenth century, when Thomas Chippendale's 1754 trade catalogue The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director helped establish furniture as a manufactured, catalogued commercial product rather than only a bespoke craft.