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Humble origins for pine furniture
In Britain at least, pine furniture was originally intended for the poorer end of the furniture buying spectrum.  Wealthy people commissioned their furniture from cabinet makers and would usually have it made in a hardwood such as oak or, if they could afford it, mahogany.  Sometimes cabinet furniture would be made of oak or beech and then veneered with more expensive woods such as walnut or mahogany.   

Books and therefore bookcases were the preserve of the wealthy and, by Victorian times, public libraries.  Most of these would therefore have been made of oak.  The aspiring middle classes would not have had the large libraries of the upper classes so would not have had need of bookcases.  But, if they did accumulate sufficient volumes of books, then it is feasible that pine bookcases would have been the order of the day.  The pine used was imported in large quantities mainly from Scandinavia and sometimes furniture made from this timber would be referred to as deal.     

Deal is not a type of wood; the term was originally applied to the quantity of timber being traded. The minimum dimensions for a deal were, originally, 7ins wide, 3ins thick and 6 feet in length.  A deal was commonly, but not exclusively, pine.  Spruce and fir trees were also imported from the same sources and would have been sold in deals.

Deal or pine bookcases might have been bought by the upper working, or lower middle classes in Victorian Britain but the very poorest would have found the price of even a pine bookcase unachievable and, with almost nothing to put in it, pointless.  The wealthier sections of society would also have purchased pine furniture, not for their own use, but for the use of their army of household servants.  It is debateable though, whether provision for their household or estate staff would have extended to pine bookcases.

A new era and a new dawn for pine furniture
After two World Wars this social order was all but obliterated – as was much of the furniture in Britain’s industrial towns.  By the 1950s there was a widespread feeling that everyone, from whatever background, should have decent housing, either privately-owned or provided by the state.  The dark, gloomy Victorian housing was swept away and, in the urge to live in light, bright conditions, replaced with modern blocks of flats.  In the spirit of the times, heavy ornate Victorian furniture became deeply unfashionable and was replaced with pine.   

Shops such as Habitat, which opened in 1964, embraced Scandinavian-style pine furniture as it was light, fresh and fitted in perfectly with the desire for a new style of living.  It was perhaps towards the end of the 1960s when it was realised that much of the dark Victorian furniture being so enthusiastically discarded was actually pine furniture obscured under layers of dirt and wax polish.  

When this furniture, including perhaps the odd pine bookcase, was cleaned back to the bare wood it had an attractive light colour, which had been mellowed by age.  So it was that the era of stripped pine furniture arrived.   

The new fashion: stripped pine
An aspect of all wooden furniture and of pine furniture in particular that sometimes confuses purchasers is the fact that as it ages it will change colour.  New pine furniture fresh from the workshop is almost white in colour.  However, as time passes, atmospheric conditions cause the wood to darken and yellow.  It inevitable that all wax, lacquer and other finishes will exacerbate this effect to some degree.    

The colour of a pine bookcase
Problems may arise when, for example, a pine bookcase is bought, followed some years later by another item of pine furniture from exactly the same range.  When the new item arrives there will be, to the consternation of the householder, a disparity in colour between the two.  They will not have noticed the gradual change in colour of the bookcase during their years of ownership.  Fortunately however the colour difference between the two items will lessen considerably, within perhaps a few months to a year.