Choosing Furniture
Individual Shops: Bang for the Buck
The 60's are dead. Gone, the days when handcrafted furniture meant some dude slopping together found lumber into ponderous, fiberglass-coated tables and splintery, almost dangerous chairs. Dead. Dead. Dead.
Today’s handcrafters have computer-controlled shaping lathes, precision, laser-guided saws, and specially formulated finishes, producing pieces of outstanding structure and quality.
And those who don't have the latest shops are competing with those who do, so their joinery and finish work have improved to an incredible degree over the last 10 years.
Why all this growth? The Internet, of course. It used to be that the competition for hand built furniture was strictly regional. Now it's international. Even the smallest shop can have clients in Dubai. In this atmosphere, the qualities of both construction and style have become paramount for the hand builder who wants to succeed in business.
And the winner is -- you. You can find almost any style you want on the web, from a sort of alien-roundish side chair to that minimalist square side table you've been trying to find for your monastery. The breadth of your collection is determined by the expanse of the web (and the depth of your credit!).
A Random Sampling
Dovetail: a Massachusetts-based arts-and-crafts style shop with two showrooms. Excellent veneer, very clean, almost Danish (but darker) look.
Suter's: miss the colonial days? Suter's located in Virginia, will bring them back for you. Queen Anne and Chippendale are their specialties.
Whit McLeod brings the arts-and-crafts movement west to Arcata, California.
Ken Frye: you have to click on his site just to experience for the wild beauty of his work.
National Upholstering Company is a specialized company focused on the rounded part of your life.
The best place to start a search for handcrafted furniture, though, is in your region. Don't assume that because you live in Virginia, you will find only the colonial styles. Every region has their traditionalists and their renegades.
But the real reasons you want to start close to home are:
1. Your furniture will be built in an area close to your climate. Newly made furniture will always change when it's shipped over distance. Ethan Allen, for instance, warns its customers that gaps may temporarily widen in leaf tables, but will eventually acclimate and return to perfection. A friend of mine builds guitars on the West Coast: elevation 60 feet, 40% humidity. He once sent a freshly built guitar to Eager, Arizona: elevation, 7000 feet, 12% humidity. It came back in three pieces.
2. Your connection with your craftsman is important. Even if you love their furniture, you might want a different finish, and you may be able to discuss a different design line. They may even suggest to you a different design that you will suddenly fall in love with. Who knows?
A final note. Beware!
Some "locally handcrafted" furniture is built offshore and finished over here, or just shoved into an artsy showroom. The pieces may look appealing, but let's face it -- if you're paying for quality handcrafting, you should get it. In my experience, even if the quality of finish and construction are good on a piece from Asia, climate change will very likely become a devastating issue over time.