Handmade furniture is not the only type of American furniture sold under that name. There are fundamentally three types of home furniture offered by American furniture stores:
Foreign Made
Furniture manufactured out of the USA, and offered for sale by American furniture retailers. These can be high quality pieces, handmade in the UK to exacting standards or cheaply put together in the Far East and of relatively low quality. Not all Far Eastern furniture is of poor quality, and much of the stuff coming out of China is very good, but it is not made in America.
Constructed in the USA
Furniture assembled in the USA, but from foreign parts or wood. The parts have been pre-manufactured outside America, like much of America's car industry uses parts made in Japan or Korea. It might be easier to find spares for recliners and other functional furniture than items made and constructed outside the USA, but not necessarily.
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Made in America
This handmade furniture is manufactured entirely in America from American wood and home-made parts. You will not find it as easy to find this type of furniture as you might think, since not all screws, nails and other metallic parts might have been sourced in the USA. However, the item is fundamentally American, made in the USA for principally U.S. manufactured parts and certainly from American wood. Parts are easy to get if your recliner stops reclining!
None of this suggests that the furniture concerned is not handmade, although much foreign furniture, and some American furniture, is made by robots. True handmade American furniture is offered by a number of well-known traditional firms such as Stickley, Sherrill, Southwood, The Custom Shoppe, Simply Amish and American Craftsman.
Handmade Amish Furniture
In fact, most Amish furniture is handcrafted by Amish people living in individual communities whose work is marketed by local or national furniture stores or distributors. Take Simply Amish, for example. This firm is located in Arcola Illinois, and most of the furniture they offer is handmade by craftsmen and women within 20 miles of their distribution center. They use wood from sustainable forests located no further than 500 miles away.
This an example of local men and women handcrafting beautiful solid wood furniture, and able to sell it through a central retail outlet such as Simply Amish, which in turn markets the furniture through local furniture distributors and retailers. That's what Made in America is supposed to mean!
Benefits of Handmade Furniture
There are many benefits of buying handmade American furniture. A major benefit is quality: sure, some furniture made by hand can be of very poor quality, but firms such as Simply Amish do not market poor quality goods, and such products would be returned as 'unsellable.' It is not the individual 'craftsman' predominantly at risk, but the retailers and their suppliers.
That is why the more respected American furniture retailers will market only the very best handmade furniture alongside their mass-produced standard stock. Handmade American furniture is constructed using traditional carpentry standards as used by the master cabinet makers of years gone by: men such as Thomas Sheraton, Gustav Stickley and Duncan Phyfe.
Wood and How it is Jointed
Choosing the correct wood is an art in itself, and fashioning an elegant piece of furniture using traditional carpentry joints that is as sturdy and strong as you require it to be is a sign of a master-craftsman. This is the quality only attainable with handmade furniture, no matter where it is crafted.
Britain, the USA and Scandinavia are noted for the high quality of their craftsmanship, and France, Germany and Holland have all had their moments in furniture history. Today it is predominantly the first mentioned three that provide most of the higher-end handmade furniture. It is difficult to beat the craftsmanship of American furniture firms such The Custom Shoppe, American Craftsman and Stickley, while Southwood are without doubt the premier producer of reproduction furniture in the USA.
There are many Amish furniture retailers that market products that have been handmade by individual craftsmen, using the traditional techniques passed down from father to son. The old jointing techniques are the best because they have been devised over time to provide the strongest and most enduring joint between two or more pieces of wood.
No screws or nails can match a powerful tenon or dovetail joint for strength and lasting qualities. They will still be bearing weight when the metallic joints have all corroded away! There are few doubts in the minds of those that purchase it that handmade furniture is the strongest type of American furniture available today - it is almost impossible to beat handmade American furniture for strength and looks.
Finding Discount Furniture and Furniture Clearance Offers
Finding discount furniture is always worthwhile, particularly when available as furniture clearance offers when the furniture is in perfect condition. Sure, you can find furniture sales anywhere where the pieces are damaged or are single parts of what were once sets. It's not very often you will find a clearance furniture sale when every single item is perfect condition and sets are complete. How can firms offer such high quality products at low quality prices?
Here are just a few of the reasons for top furniture stores offering discount furniture to you at such low prices.
1. Furniture Clearance of Slow-Moving Stock
Sometimes certain lines do not sell well and it is considered better to sell the stock at a reduced price than to use it for firewood! If an item has been in stock for over a year or more, then the furniture store might decide that it is time for it to make way for newer and more popular designs.
Initially, such items will be given a prominent place in the showroom and sales staff will be instructed to actively promote it. However, if it fails to sell even then, the item or items will then be put on sale at discount furniture prices and sold as a furniture clearance offer. There is nothing wrong with the quality of the furniture: there are no dents or scratches, but it simply appears not to appeal to the patrons of that particular store.
2. Making Way for New Stock
It is not unusual for a new line of furniture to come in, and the store has to sell off the old versions to make way for the new. You get this in sports stores, car showrooms and other retail outlets where products are subject to progressive updating and the previous models have to be sold off to make way for the next generation.
This can also happen with furniture, and in such cases furniture clearance sales offer the opportunity for high quality home furniture to be available at highly discounted prices. '50% OFF' is not an unusual ticket to see, and some furniture clearance sales offer even better discounts than that.
The reason is that the old stock must go, and if it is not sold before the new deliveries come in then what does the store do? There are not many options, so you can find some amazing discount furniture prices available if you are lucky enough to be in the right store at the right time.
3. Display Discount Furniture Sales
While you might not find the bulk sales that you could with old stock replacement as describe above, you may be lucky and be in the store when clearance furniture prices are available for pieces that have been used on display. These are generally sold 'as seen', meaning that the store is not oblige to point out any scratches, dents or other damage. You purchase the furniture at a low price and assume responsibility for any problems associate with it.
This is fair enough, because ex-display items could be anything from perfect to badly scratched - what do you expect from furniture available to the public to try out and handle! However, the low prices of such discount furniture usually make it well worth while buying. Just think of it: brand new furniture is likely to be just as damaged after a month in your home as if you purchased it at only 40% of the regular price in a furniture clearance sale.
4. Special Purchase Sales
Furniture outlets sometimes get the opportunity to make special purchases of furniture such as recliners, sectionals and sofas that are not their own old stock, but older stock of the manufacturers. When furniture manufacturers decide to design and market new ranges of recliners or sectionals, for example, they cannot continue to also offer the previous range.
Just like the 2010 design of a specific automobile cannot be sold alongside the new 2013 model that takes it place, the older versions of a specific line of furniture have to be sold off quickly by a manufacturer when they design and launch their new range.
Such stock is offered to specific furniture outlets at knock-down prices to enable them to pass it on to their regular customers at discount furniture prices. Whole ranges of furniture of many different types can sometimes be made available in furniture clearance offers. It is sometimes possible to furnish an entire room at a fraction of the normal cost.
Finding discount furniture is not particularly difficult if you know where to look for it. Such furniture is of high quality and blemish free - the fact that a piece is offered at a furniture clearance price does not infer that it is substandard or that there is anything at all wrong with it. Take such offers when they are available because you may never find such great prices for high quality furniture again.
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