Amish Furniture: Bridge to the Modern World by:Glenn Mast

Even though the Amish continue to live rural, old fashioned lifestyles in today's modern world and continue to prefer to work with their hands and largely live off the land. In our hectic highly mechanized modern environment we live in, the principles that the Amish still live by and the way in which they continue to create Amish handcrafted furniture, may seem to be something of and very unique environment.

However these makers of quality furniture are able to maintain their frugal, simple and sustainable, non wasteful lifestyles largely because of their rural life and their traditional trades that depend upon little other than what the land itself offers them.

Though Amish furniture has now come to be widely available throughout the United States, it is still made the same old fashioned way. What has changed is the way that people are able to get access to and buy this furniture. A number of business people and distributors have become a sort of bridge, via media, between the Amish who continue to avoid outside contact, and those who wish to buy high quality furniture.

This serves the purpose of letting the Amish continue to live in their simple lives in their small rural communities that are insulated from main stream life without interruption or disturbance. They continue to earn their living by farming, furniture making and other such trades that may be plied from home, preserving their way of life. It also serves to make available to us, Amish made furniture, without us having to physically visit those communities to buy their products.

It is still solid wood and old fashioned dovetail joinery that holds pride of place for the talented Amish furniture makers; and hand tools are still the preference. Locally harvested hardwoods that are being used for the furniture means that imported raw materials are not used!

Occasionally, well kept antiques may be hard to distinguish from new pieces of Amish handcrafted furniture, since they may both look a lot alike and since Amish furniture bears none of the hallmarks of modern furniture. Because of the relationship Amish craftsmen have developed with the people, who distribute and market their furniture, it makes it easier to customize Amish furniture today. Buyers can communicate their requirements or preferences as to color, design and dimensions of a particular piece of furniture, which then are conveyed to the furniture makers, who then proceed to fashion wood into what is required. It is also possible, in some cases, to visit the workshop of an Amish craftsman, to see the furniture being made!

 Author Resource: Glenn Mast is a successful business owner of a couple websites that offer Amish Handcrafted Products. His sites offer products and information about Amish Made Products & decor for your home, lawn or garden.

http://www.amishbuiltlawndecor.com 

http;//www.amishhandcraftedmetalwindchimes.com