Can furniture be a wise investment? Even in a slow economy? According to the Kovels website data gatherers number three of the Top Twenty most sought after searches in July 2009 was indeed furniture. The Kovels are considered the leading expert in collectibles and antiques and not only publish the most sought after price guides [...]

 The Amish arrived in America around 1730. A group of the descendants of the Anabaptists, which include Amish and Mennonites, settled near Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  William Penn had began a ‘holy experiment’ in religious tolerance and welcomed these European immigrants. Although the most popularized, the Pennsylvania Amish are not the largest group of U.S. In [...]

 Historians following the trends of the furniture industry can attest that furniture styles and their designers are virtual archives of an era. The economy of the time, the availability of supplies and tools and most surprising, the politics and religion of the time all influenced home décor. Religion and the organizations that formed around each [...]

The furniture term Depression era has come to mean a piece dating from the ‘20s, ‘30s or early 1940s. The stock market crash that occurred on that black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, soon became better known as the Great Depression. The Depression was a rapidly spreading worldwide economic downturn that was not easily recovered from [...]

 
The years surrounding Civil War was not just a separation of tastes politically but one in interior décor. The last part of the 19th century in North America saw the blending of many very strong interior design tastes within one home. Many consider this to be the Eclectic period in American history. This eclectic collecting [...]

 
Hardwood as a natural resource that has helped shaped not just communities but the evolution of societies in to countries such as the United States. Natural resources have always been a major factor in determining how well an environment can sustain people but wood has an influence that runs deeper than everything but food and [...]

                                                                          Perhaps it was the birth of a new nation that spurred great interest in both furniture and architecture during what became known as the Federal Era. Federal was an American period that existed from the end of the Revolution (1780) to post-Revolutionary War (1830). It was the end of the Colonial Period in [...]

 
 
There may not be a better known or more duplicated wooden chair in the world than the Windsor. The Windsor is well recognized for its bentwood back frame and its pegged legs going directly in to its wooden seat. The Windsor is differentiated from other styles of chairs because of this styling that normally are [...]

Many theories hold that Colonial American architect Peter Harrison (1716-1775) may have influenced the popularity of porches. Harrison’s travels and education in Europe and studying Italian architecture may have inspired him to study the Palladian movement. From this the Palladian porticos came in to vogue. The term “Palladian” is usually used in reference to buildings [...]

 Patio furniture has been popular for hundreds of years. As trendy as outdoor rooms are today they were possibly even more elegant a few hundred years ago. Porticos, porches, piazzas, terraces and gazebos were the rage in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
A portico is a porch or walkway with a roof supported by [...]