Antique Furniture Terms Explained
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- Fall front: Desk or cabinet door designed to open by falling forward. The opened door, supported by struts, doubles as a table.
- Fan-back chair: Type of Windsor chair with a roughly rectangular crest rail topping a straight-sided, flaring back. Also called a comb-back.
- Farthingale chair: An armless, low-backed upholstered chair with a wide, shallow seat popular during the late 17th century. Also called a Cromwellian chair.
- Festoon: Decorative ornament composed of a U-shaped garland of fruit, flowers, and berries.
- Fiddle-back chair: Period term for wood turner's version of Queen Anne-style chair. Refers to violin shape of splat. Also called York chair in some areas.
- Fielded panel: Board with chamfered edges which fits into mortise-and-tenon-constructed frame.
- Field bedstead: Bedstead with arched canopy. Name derives from the story that some of these bedsteads were used by military personnel while at war.
- Finger-rolled carving: In actuality, distinctive type of molding used on some Rococo Revival-style furniture.
- Finial: A decorative ornament topping the corners or pediments of furniture. Occasionally finials hang from furniture, and so are referred to as drop finials. Finials were turned or carved in a variety of shapes, including the acorn, urn, candle flame, and corkscrew. Also a turned knob used at the intersection of stretchers on tables, chairs and stools to complete a design effect.
- Fluting: A series of parallel horizontal channels used as ornament or design on flat or turned surfaces. Opposite of reeding. Usually to lighten the appearance of a piece or to give a required proportion to the design.
- Foot: See Blocked; Blunt-arrow; Bracket; Bulb; Bun; Button; Claw-and-ball; Club; Cuffed; French; Hairy paw; Hoof; Pad; Paintbrush; Rat-claw; Scroll; Snake; Spade; Spanish; Trepid.
- Form: Joined bench. Common type of seating furniture during 17th century.
- "French" chair: Type of upholstered armchair with Marlborough leg popular during Chippendale period. Term used by Thomas Chippendale.
- French foot: Tapering, sometimes concavely curved foot used on some case pieces during the Federal period. See also Bracket foot.
- Fretwork: Openwork pattern of intersecting lines, often cut with a fretsaw. Sometimes used as trim on the top of sides of case pieces. Particularly popular during the Chippendale period.
- Frets: Fretwork either applied or cut from solid and used as decoration. If presented on a solid surface, known as a 'blind' fret. If left as open decoration, known as 'open' fret. Used particularly in mid- and later eighteenth century in Gothic or Chinese taste.
- Frieze: The surface below a table top or the part of a cornice consisting of the flat surface beneath the top moulding.
