Friday, October 7, 2011

Amish Furniture - A Tradition in Handmade Craftsmanship

!9# Amish Furniture - A Tradition in Handmade Craftsmanship

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It's widely known that the Amish make high-quality solid wood furniture that's also beautiful. They use only solid wood, so the furniture they create is durable and strong, and lasts for many generations. They use the best quality wood, true, but their workmanship is also unsurpassed in today's modern mass-market world of factory-produced furniture. These high-quality products are made not just as a principle of personal pride, but because the Amish believe they worship God through their actions.

The Amish take great care when they choose the wood for each particular project.  Quartersawn oak and oak are predominantly the types of wood used in constructing most pieces of furniture, but they also use pine, cedar, black walnut, hickory, maple and cherry. The Amish prefer oak because it has beautiful grain lines and a honey color. It is also widely used in the United States and Canada. Cherry is used for Queen Anne style furniture. Cedar, too, is used because its fresh, clean scent lends itself well to furniture used for storage. Hickory and maple are both lightly colored and extremely hard, which make them another popular choice for furniture.

Amish furniture has some well-recognized styles, including Queen Anne, Shaker, and Mission. These can be ornately carved or artfully simple. Other styles are Beachfront, Cottage, Rustic, Southwestern, West Lake, Royal Mission, Modesto, McCoy, Rio Grande, Spring Hill, Shaker Hill, Hampton, Carlisle, Bunker Hill, Bavarian, Contemporary, or Traditional/Heritage. Amish woodworkers from Indiana and Lancaster communities make most of the furniture, and styles can vary from region to region. Each woodworker also has his own personal touches to add, so that each piece is completely unique.

Amish furniture can be bought for any room in the house, including the home office, dining room, kitchen, living room, and bedroom. Most popularly made are dining room tables, dressers, and beds. There are also matching sets available for distinctive statements within each room. Heirloom quality rocking chairs and baby cribs are also available and unique. Amish furniture includes something for absolutely everyone. Outdoor furniture has recently become an option as a new trend emerges on the scene.

The Amish themselves still shun electricity for most uses, but do use diesel generators to run hydraulic or pneumatic power tools so that they can construct and mold their fine furniture pieces.

This is not in contrast to their belief system. While electricity is controlled and supplied by the outside world, and against their belief system, the Amish control the diesel generators, thus to use them does not contradict their beliefs. Because they can work more quickly with this type of power, they have more time to complete the fine detail work that they still must do by hand. The wood used for each piece of furniture is carefully chosen so that wood grains and colors work together to create an aesthetically pleasing effect.

Once an older son completes his formal schooling, his father takes him into training and teaches him everything about woodworking and its intricacies, so that the expertise is passed on to the next generation.

Until recently, Amish furniture was only available in local stores or antique shops. Today, though, many of these stores offer online shopping to consumers so that Amish furniture is now accessible to everyone. This type of process is done through "English" (non-Amish) business intermediaries who buy directly from the Amish and then establish and manage a physical storefronts or online stores for them.


Amish Furniture - A Tradition in Handmade Craftsmanship

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