I think you’re on the same track that I am. It feels to me that the craft of woodworking is kind of stagnant and mostly in a state of reinactment at this point.

Woodworking is a very old craft, we’ve had a long time to establish what works and what doesn’t through trial and error. And yet. The village carpenter in the year 1800 would have made furniture that did what the customer needed it to do, a writing desk was well suited to the task of writing as it existed at the time, with a place for the ink well and such. Sometime in the 20th century, furniture design ossified, and now we get “It’s a low cabinet that’s 3 feet wide” for a TV stand or “It’s a table” for a computer desk.

There was an episode of the New Yankee Workshop where Norm built a computer desk. His approach was to make it look like any old two pillar desk with very large drawers that slid out, housing the PC tower itself on one side and a printer or scanner on the other, with the monitor and speakers plunked on the desktop. I’ve seen the exact same approach from commercial flat pack furniture, with desks designed to look like old fashioned paperwork desks, dining room cabinets or even armoires.

I will say, Norm would build a “new antique” using more modern methods (correcting for the show being made in the 90s). He was fond of power tools, biscuit joinery, made significant use of plywood and other manufactured materials, but his design work is rather…conservative.