copeland
Copeland’s New Catalina Walnut Dining Furniture: Coming Soon!
Copeland Furniture, just down the road from us in Bradford, Vermont is famous for it's modern, contemporary solid wood bedroom furniture. A couple years ago, Copeland introduced the new Frank Lloyd Wright® Collection of authentic reproduction prairie-style furniture designed by America's foremost architect.
Well, now Copeland is introducing another new series of high end furniture, The Catalina Walnut Dining Room Collection.
If you're already a fan of Catalina's mid-century modern bedroom furniture, home office furniture, and TV-media furniture, I think you're going to love the dining furniture collection.
The tables, chairs and buffets are all in sync with Catalina's retro-modern shapes and sensibilities, relying on simple, elegant lines that have just enough curve– but not too much. Walnut is the only wood used for the Catalina collection and it is available in both natural wood (as shown) or in a darker slate-on-walnut stain. Dennis and Manjula are working feverishly to get all of the Catalina dining collection pieces up on our website and ready for purchase by week's end. In the meantime, if you have any questions, give us a call.
All Copeland's furniture is 100% American made, right here in Vermont.
Copeland’s American Made Bedroom Furniture – Customer Reviews
We've been offering Copeland's American made (actually Vermont made) bedroom furniture for over 2 months now. Because each piece is hand made to order, it's taken awhile to get the furniture crafted, shipped and installed in our customers' homes. But the first several bedroom sets are being delivered and customers are starting to contact Shannon with their reactions:
"BEAUTIFUL! It is extremely well made, extremely easy to put together and is a stunning addition to my home. My handyman, who has put furniture together for more than 20 years, couldn't stop commenting on how beautiful the bed was and how amazingly simple it was to put together. I love the bed and I love that it was made in America!"
~Barbara F, NJ
Thanks Barbara! We're extremely happy to hear this kind of positive review from our customers and are delighted to know they are sleeping better on their new handmade American furniture from Vermont Woods Studios.
Custom Furniture “Fast”
Custom furniture "fast" is really an oxymoron. I mean, one of the nicest things about owning custom furniture is the knowlegedge that is was built carefully, just for you. Not that it was slapped together fast.
So in the world of handmade custom furniture, "fast" is a relative term.
Our new Copeland Furniture collection is perhaps the "fastest" furniture we can deliver with a lead time of about 5-8 weeks. Typically it takes Copeland up to 6 weeks to complete the crafting of your furniture then, depending on where you live, it takes another 1-3 weeks to get your furniture safely to your doorstep and installed in your home.
So is it worth waiting for? Check out our customer Testimonials to see. And consider too, that with handmade, custom furniture you're buying something you're going to have for the rest of your life. We hope you'll think it's worth the wait.
Frank Lloyd Wright: The Architect Behind The Furniture
But in addition to designing over 100 buildings and structures, Wright also designed about 1100 pieces of furniture. His focus was on designing things that were "in harmony with humanity and its environment", a philosophy he called organic architecture.
We're excited to be able to bring Wright's organic furniture to you through our partnership with fellow Vermont company, Copeland Furniture. Working with archivists at The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, Copeland Furniture created reproduction furniture that exemplifies Wright's design and aesthetic principles. Each piece has been named for the client and house for which Wright designed it.
Frank Lloyd Wright® American Made Furniture by Copeland is made of solid hardwood and can be customized in several stains on either quartersawn white oak or American black cherry wood. Each reproduction piece is licensed by the Frank Lloyd Wright® Foundation and is engraved with Wright's signature and a discreet serial number. It is some of the finest, handmade, collectible luxury furniture you will find. Check out Wright's Usonian furniture collection and Copeland's reproduction pieces from the Dana Thomas, Boynton, Coonley and Heurtley homes. Learn more about Frank Lloyd Wright on our pinterest board.
Copeland’s Modern Astrid Bedroom – Tops The Best Seller List
We've been working with Ben Copeland and his crew at Copeland Furniture for several months now and have most of their furniture up for sale on our website at Vermont Woods Studios.
Although Copeland offers a variety of American furniture styles including Shaker, Mission and Craftsman, it's their modern, contemporary furniture that's making the biggest splash with our customers.
The Copeland Astrid Bedroom Furniture Collection is at the Top of our Best Seller's list this week. Check it out. It's design is very minimalist with a 1950s mid century style: straight lines and deeply splayed George Jetson style legs. Astrid bedroom furniture is available in cherry, maple and walnut wood. The perfect style statement in modern contemporary midtown and uptown apartments in Manhattan, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC and points beyond!
American Furniture: Best Sellers
Over the last month or two Dennis and Manjula have added a couple hundred new Copeland American Made Furniture– beds, chests, dressers and other furniture pieces to our website. Now we have to re-organize a bit so it's easy to find what you're looking for.
We've created quite a few new categories to browse by, including one for Furniture Best Sellers. These are the most popular pieces in our Vermont made furniture store. Most of them will look familiar to you, especially if you have that natural, solid Shaker Sensibilty that draws many wood furniture shoppers and interior design professionals to our store.
But others are a surprise! Copeland's modern, contemporary Catalina bedroom set and their Monterey Arts & Crafts style bedroom sets are coming on strong and fast becoming our new best sellers. Have a look and let me know which furniture peices or collection you like best.
Where’s The Best Place To Buy Copeland Furniture?
Copeland Furniture in Bradford, Vermont makes stunningly beautiful furniture and they've gotten so good at marketing it that web-based shopping carts are lining up to carry it online. You can find Copeland furniture right next to pet accessories, dishwashers and printer paper at stores like Amazon.com, Ebay, Yahoo and Yliving.
Then there are dozens of retailers based overseas that appear to sell Copeland Furniture, but their websites don't have any "about us" or "contact us" info, so who knows? I often find scrambled versions of my own blogs and website content pasted into their product pages so I don't have much confidence that anyone's really there… other than a computer and a cash register, maybe.
So if you're considering Copeland Furniture, we thought you might be interested in knowing where the best place to buy it is.
Well, of course we think it's Vermont Woods Studios and we've come up with the Top 10 Reasons Why. Besides the lifetime guarantee (which no other retailer I know of offers), low price guarantee, free shipping and our relentless customer service, there is one fact that other stores just can't duplicate. Copeland furniture is made in VT and Vermont is where we live. We are the leading authority on Vermont made furniture. It's all we sell. It's what we know. It's what we believe in. And we'll be here selling Vermont made furniture for the long haul.
One more reason. Vermont Woods Studios was founded to showcase Vermont's handcrafted wood furniture in a way that raises awareness about where your furniture comes from. We use a portion of the profits from each piece of furniture to conserve forests, plant trees and save endangered species from going extinct due to habitat destruction. But that story's for another day. Thanks for reading!
Photo by Carolyn Bates, courtesy of Copeland Furniture
Beds and Storage
Remember when you used to clean up your bedroom by hiding everything under the bed? Well now you can do that in style! Luxury solid wood platform beds with underbed storage drawers are best sellers at Vermont Woods Studios this year.
Metropolitan apartment dwellers trying to make the most of furniture for small spaces are finding that underbed storage drawers can elegantly replace the need for chests, dressers and armoires.
Storage beds can also provide space for shoes, seasonal clothing, blankets and linens. This one is the Harbor Island Platform Storage Bed and it's shown here in solid natural maple wood, although you can customize it online with dark wood colors too.
The matching nightstand is designed to let you pull out the storage drawers easily. There's another Harbor Island nightstand with a drawer if you prefer, but you'll have to move it aside to open the storage drawers.
All of our storage beds are 100% made in America (right here in Vermont actually) of sustainably harvested wood with family-friendly non-toxic finishes. Check them out!
Modern Shaker Furniture: An Oxymoron?
Shaker Furniture conjures up images of traditional New England style tables, chairs and bedroom furniture designed way back in the late 1700s by members of the The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, otherwise known as the Shakers. It's really the only style of furniture that's widely agreed upon as quintessentially American and it's changed only in subtle ways over the last few hundred years.
Vermont furniture makers are perhaps the world's most diverse group of Shaker furniture makers. Most furniture coming out of Vermont reflects Shaker values in one way or another (highest quality craftsmanship, simple functional design, elegant straight lines, finely crafted joinery such as mortise and tenon and dovetails) but each furniture maker has a unique signature on their furniture.
We've been working with Copeland Furniture recently, as we've added their bedroom furniture, TV-Entertainment furniture and home office furniture to our website. It's interesting to see how they've evolved from building traditional Shaker Furniture (Sarah Collection) 30 years ago to ever increasingly modern furniture today. Copeland's Lily collection blends a modern Scandinavian style with Shaker furniture design. Their Berkeley collection is a fusion of Arts and Crafts, modern Japanese and Shaker style.
Check out these and other new collections and see how you like this modernization of Shaker style furniture. As far as I can see, the addition of Copeland furniture to our website gives Vermont Woods Studios the most expansive and diverse selection of high end Shaker style furniture on the Internet.
Defining Fine Furniture: Finish
So far, in an effort to define "fine furniture" we've discussed craftsmanship and the type of wood used, so now let's talk about finish. One thing most people are surprised to learn is that even though a piece of fine furniture is crafted and assembled it's a long way from being finished.
I like the way Vermont furniture maker, Bob Gasperetti of Mount Tabor puts it: "The saying that it takes 90% of the time to accomplish the last 10% of the work couldn't be more true than in handmade furniture."
He is right! I wish you could run your hand across one of Bob's table tops right now. After a piece is built, Bob sands the surface to 320 grit (this requires multiple sandings with increasingly fine sandpaper). That takes forever but there is no substitute if you're looking for the kind of smooth, supple feeling you get when touching Bob's furniture.
After sanding, Bob applies multiple coats of a non-toxic, environmentally-friendly oil until the surface of his furniture feels as smooth and soft as a baby's skin.
Some people would opine that an oil finish is the only option for "fine furniture" but as someone who doesn't like to take the time to maintain (aka re-oil and it's really no big deal, but I'm lazy) an oil finish I'll say oil is not the only option. Vermont furniture makers offer dozens of other choices, including a blend of oil and beeswax, non-toxic lacquers and even an eco-friendly clear finish made out of whey (a byproduct of our Vermont dairy industry). Copeland Furniture is once again leading the green furniture industry in the research and application of eco-friendly water=based lacquer finishes. I'll write about them next time when we wrap up this disucssion of fine furniture definitions with the topic of sustainability and karma.
Anyway, no study of fine furniture finishes would be complete without a visit to the workshops of a few fine furniture makers where you can run your hands over the furniture and compare the sensations from different finishes. Information and driving directions to the shops I've talked about (and many more) are available in the Vermont Forest Heritage brochure. If you're coming in from Boston or New York to go skiing, you'll pass by a number of them. So if there's no snow, or it's too cold to ski or if you're just too tired… take a day off and treat yourself to a tour of some of the world's best fine furniture workshops.
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