Dining Tables and Chairs in the Foshan market

Chairs earn their price at the joint

A chair lives or lasts at its joints rather than in the wood itself, because the joint is what takes years of being dragged across a floor and leaned back on. So look there first and let the rest follow.

Grab the back of a chair and twist it against the seat. There should be no give and no noise. Turn it over and look for corner blocks. A chair with glued and screwed corner blocks is a different product from one that relies on dowels alone, and the price difference is usually smaller than the quality difference.

Stone and glass tops change your shipping maths

Sintered stone tops have taken over a lot of the mid market and they look superb. They are also heavy and brittle at the edge, and they turn a cheap table into an expensive shipping problem.

If you’re buying stone or glass tops, ask specifically how the top ships. Crated on its edge with foam corners is what you want. Flat in a carton on top of the base is what you sometimes get, and it’s how a container arrives with three broken tables.

Weight matters too. A container fills up by weight long before it fills by volume once you load stone, so plan the mix. Stone tops on the bottom, upholstered goods on top, and don’t let a consolidator load it the other way round.

Questions on dining tables and chairs