About Amish Furniture
An enduring combination of simple beauty, fine craftsmanship & outstanding value.
Amish made furniture is a unique American product renowned for its quality craftsmanship and beauty. Handcrafted in the midwest from locally grown hardwoods such as oak, cherry and maple, Amish furniture offers tremendous value. It’s furniture that will last for generations – but is priced competitively with mass-produced furniture.
Fenton MacLaren features the best selection in the entire Bay Area.
Over the years, our family business has established close working relationships with numerous Amish furniture making families, making us the most well connected Amish furniture retailer in the San Francisco Bay Area. We feature handcrafted Amish furniture for every room in the home, in a variety of styles from traditional to contemporary. Pieces may be purchased from our store stock or custom ordered to your exact specifications – including type of wood, finish color, hardware and size. As always, you can’t make a buying mistake at Fenton MacLaren – even custom Amish furniture purchases are covered by our 30 day money back guarantee.
The Amish Furniture Story
Amish people are members of a religious community that originally emigrated from central Europe in the 1720’s. They believe in living simply, and most choose not to use modern technologies in their daily lives. Traditionally, Amish families supported themselves by farming, and furniture making was a practical skill used to make furniture for their own homes. More recently, furniture making has become a cottage industry enabling Amish families to supplement their farm income and maintain their traditional way of life. Furniture making techniques have been passed from generation to generation, and the pieces made today are crafted to the same high standard as those made in the past for their own homes.
Each family typically specializes in one aspect of furniture making, such as chair building, cabinet making, or wood finishing. The families then work together as a community to coordinate their products into cohesive furniture collections that can be ordered as matching sets. For example, a typical dining room set consists of a table made by one family, chairs from a second family, and cabinets from a third. All of the pieces are made to match one another, and then they’re all hand finished at the same time in a specialized finishing shop to ensure a consistent finish.
Specialization and the small size of the family furniture workshops (3-5 craftsmen) ensure that the craftsman who builds your furniture is an expert in its production, who oversees its construction from start to finish. Pride of workmanship is evident in every piece, and every piece of furniture is signed by its maker.
Specialization also results in efficiency and these small workshops, located on family farms, have very low production costs. This, combined with the strong work ethic and cooperative nature of the Amish community, results in high quality furniture that is very competitively priced. For little more than the cost of a typical mass produced item, it’s possible to purchase a custom made, handcrafted work of art.
Amish made furniture is an environmentally friendly product. The craftsmen use locally grown native hardwoods. Nothing is wasted – even the scrap lumber from the workshops is used to heat their buildings or made into shavings for animal bedding. Shipments to us are consolidated into full truckloads and the furniture is carefully wrapped in blankets, not cardboard or foam packing materials. Perhaps the most environmentally responsible aspect of all is that, unlike much of what is being mass produced today, this furniture is made to last for generations and won’t end up in a landfill in five or ten years.
How to Order Amish Furniture
One of the reasons this furniture is so popular is because the customer can order it to their exact specifications. We have samples from each manufacturer in our stores and catalogs showing all of the products they make. If you are placing a custom order, you will be able to choose the wood (quartersawn white oak, red oak, maple, cherry or walnut), finish color, hardware style, and size or cabinet configuration. Custom orders typically take 12-14 weeks to produce – careful craftsmanship takes some time. The payoff for your patience will be an heirloom quality piece of furniture that will be enjoyed for years to come.