The Benefits of Handmade Wooden Furniture

As owners of a furniture manufacturing business we are often asked “What kind of furniture do you make?” and “What are the benefits of handmade wooden furniture? ” You would think that as the founders of the business we would be able to answer that question with relative ease. The truth is we still to this day struggle to keep the answer simple and concise. First of all the obvious fact is that we make real wooden furniture as apposed to furniture made using man made products. Our furniture can be described as a farmhouse furniture style, although it is a modern version of what used to be very fussy designs with lots of frilly detailed cut outs etc. Our furniture is contemporary in design with clean straight lines and everything but fussy detail. The furniture we make is definitely handmade or handcrafted as we sometimes say, which in itself is slightly ambiguous as we do use woodworking machinery. The machinery we use however, is traditional woodworking machinery that in some cases is over 80 years old!

Chunky Furniture

Here at Ashton & Coleman, we like to use the term chunky wooden furniture. This description is true in many ways in that the section sizes and thickness we tend to use are bigger and more substantial than most cheaper high street furniture retailers. There are other companies out there making furniture that is described as chunky furniture, the difference is that they are using extremely inferior timbers and they use very naive techniques of screwing the wood together and calling it handmade furniture. The lack of care and quality of this chunky style wooden furniture is staggering. The companies making this stuff and confidently selling it to their customers wouldn’t know a woodworking joint if it smacked them in the face. So its possible that using the word chunky, although factual, lowers the perception of quality from a certain perspective. Lastly the term rustic furniture is a term that also has a lot to do with perception.

Our Style

We purposefully leave and add saw marks and milling features in the timber as we make the furniture, which actually makes it harder to manufacture. We do this because the overall look at the end when finished correctly is a style and look that is so beautiful and natural and unique that it can’t be mass produced or easily copied by inferior furniture makers or high street companies who simply import furniture from overseas. We pride ourselves on the benefits of handmade furniture compared to mass produced pieces. The problem is the description of this look is often referred to as rustic, and the word rustic potentially leaves a tone of either rough or badly finished furniture rather than carefully handcrafted and lovingly finished which is what ours actually is.

In summary when I am asked these days, I often direct people to our website or showroom based in the heart of the Peak District. The style of furniture we make is hopefully clear to see when people visit one of our showrooms and see the quality, the finish, the style and beauty of our furniture for themselves. You simply cannot beat letting a person experience the look, smell and touch of natural wooden furniture. And if you visit our Two Dales showroom, you can even hear the furniture being made.

Proper Joinery Techniques

Their are two things we care about as a matter of priority at Ashton & Coleman. First is quality, second is style. Ultimately our customers need to love the way our furniture looks and we understand that that is probably the first thing a customer is considering. But customers are also concerned with quality as they need to know that their hard earned money is well spent. We often talk to our customers about prices of furniture and try our best to explain that we don’t offer cheap furniture or expensive furniture we offer good old fashioned value for money. This in simple terms is what we all need in life. Value. If you buy an Ashton & Coleman Bed you will never need to buy another bed for that room. We offer and honour our lifetime guarantees. Part of the ethos of quality and style is about keeping things simple. If we construct our beds with good quality timber in certain section sizes with very simple but highly effective traditional woodworking joints such as mortice and tenons, it is fair to say that they simply will not fail. Our Mill Sawn Pine Plank Bed is delivered to our customers with a fully constructed headboard and footboard that are mortice and tenoned together with high quality wood glue and dowelled through for extra strength. Two side rails and bed slats come separately and the bed is assembled with no more than four mortice and tenon joints. The 27mm thick redwood bed slats are screwed down for a super strong support for your mattress. Just four simple but extremely strong joints hold the bed together and you can dismantle and reassemble the bed as many times as you like and it will continue to give you the same strength and stability. They do not break. Our mission you could say is to make and sell as many solid wood beds as possible, not because we want to make tonnes of money as there are much better ways to do that than making furniture for a living. Our mission is to put an end to poorly made products that are designed to fail the customer and fail the planet. Doing things to the best of your ability with natural sustainable materials helps sustain an environments future with the least amount of human impact possible, the benefits of handmade wooden furniture.

Chunky Furniture Character

The character of our chunky wooden furniture is unique, not only to other companies but to each individual piece that we make. Handcrafted furniture by it’s nature is completely unique. Every single piece we make has a different character due to the type of saw marks, milling marks, knots, grain pattern and strap marks each piece has. Character though is a subjective description that can be interpreted in many different ways by different people. What one person calls character another calls a fault. Seeing our furniture with your own eyes is always recommended as this generally gives you a good idea as to whether you love the character as much as we do or whether its not your thing. We do still make bespoke furniture for customers so if you have a specific style you are looking for we can still make your furniture for you.

Caring for Wooden Furniture

Wood finishing itself is an industry all on its own. There is a plethora of wood finishing products out there aimed at the consumer market. Filtering out what is appropriate and right for each application is key to getting good results. The way in which you then apply the chosen finish is also key to getting the results you hope for. At Ashton & Coleman Furniture we have spent decades working with wood and wood finishing and still do not know it all. Far from it. We know what we need to know based on the products we make with the timber we use and how we want it to look, feel and be used. Our ethos is very much based on using natural sustainable materials and that includes our wood finishes. We use Fiddes Supreme Wax polish for our Mill Sawn Pine range of furniture. These are made in Wales using the finest natural waxes available. Finishing our pine furniture with this type of wax enhances the natural beauty of the wood we use and nourishes and protects the wood also. Another reason we stand by the benefits of handmade wooden furniture over mass produced pieces. Our range of Oak Furniture is finished with Fiddes Hard Wax Oil which is made from a blend of natural oils and waxes that offers exceptional durability and resistance for internal furniture. All of the finishes we use are chosen to give our furniture a completely natural look and feel.

Our Guarantee To You

The fact that furniture is made from chunky wood sections does not mean it is made well. We have done our research and we know what other companies do and what they don’t do. Whether the piece you buy from Ashton & Coleman is made in a chunky wooden furniture style or whether its a piece with finer section sizes, we always make furniture with proper woodworking joints and techniques to stand by the benefits of handmade wooden furniture. We make things properly so our customers get proper value for money and we get a good reputation for quality. For that reason we have no problem offering lifetime guarantees on a variety of our products. These guarantees are manufacturing guarantees to be clear. We guarantee the quality of construction. Any accidental damage or climate based issue caused by the customer is not covered. We simply guarantee the fact that the furniture will not break.

Mass Produced Imitations

As mentioned above there are many companies out there professing to be something that they really aren’t. It is the same in every industry. There are mechanics that you wish you hadn’t taken your car to, a tradesperson who created more problems in your home than they fixed. The list goes on from furniture retailers to dentists and lawyers, there are cowboys out there willing to take your cash without concern for you in the slightest, we belive in the benefits of handmade wooden furniture. There are also people who firmly believe they are skilled or able enough to serve you effectively and professionally who have no idea how bad their work actually is. Either way, it is difficult for consumers to find services and providers that they prefer and trust. This is where ‘value’ comes in. We have stated many times that our chunky wooden furniture is not cheap nor expensive, it is just great value. It is the price it needs to be for us to continue providing environmentally friendly, value based products to our customers. Our company is built on quality.

Conclusion

Whether you call our furniture ‘Chunky Wooden Furniture’ ‘Solid Wood Furniture’ ‘Country Furniture’ ‘Rustic Furniture’ ‘Farmhouse Furniture’ or just simply ‘Handmade Furniture’, the fact is Ashton & Coleman Furniture is designed to look and feel as natural as possible and to last forever. We all like the idea of leaving a legacy of some sort, this we hope will be ours.