Rensselaer Adventures

This blog reports events and interesting tidbits from Rensselaer, Indiana and the surrounding area.

Friday, December 4, 2009

Shopping at Greene's Furniture

A few weeks ago we visited Greene's Antique Mall west of Rensselaer on SR114 and mentioned that it was next to Greene's Amish Furniture.

Outside the store was a selection of storage sheds. They are a strange form of furniture, but if they can be sold for a profit, why not sell them?

Greene's sells expensive and very high quality furniture. The desk shown below was as nice a desk as I have ever seen. It was listed for $16,999 but was on sale with the chair for only $11,999. If you want the best, you have to pay for it. (The only piece of furniture that we ever bought from Greene's was a desk just like this one except that it was about one third the size and a lot less than one third the price.)

The front show room is full of beautiful tables. On the day these pictures were taken, Greene's was having an open house and a number of Amish craftsmen were in the store. If you look carefully at the left side of the photograph, you can see several.

On of my complaints about new furniture is that much of it is poorly made. That would probably not be a complaint I could make about any of these pieces. Since there is a limited market in Rensselaer for furniture of this quality, it should not surprise anyone that Greene's markets to a much boarder audience. People will travel for quality. I have seen their ads on the Lafayette television channel, and their website make clear that they are quite willing to ship out of state. Apparently it is not uncommon for Amish furniture to be sold mail order.

Behind the main showroom is the bedroom room. (I had to say that.) The entire store has 14,000 square feet of space and has been in operation since 1986.
 
In another part of the store there are displays cabinets and living room furniture.  There was also a selection of beds and tables in the primitive, loggy style shown below. It looks solid but not comfortable.
 
Did you know that there was once an Amish presence near the Mount Ayr? They settled there about 1870 but left around 1890 because they did not like the growing conditions. They left an Amish cemetery two miles west of Mount Ayr a bit south of CR 325S.

1 comment:

flatbow said...

That's a really nice looking desk!
From my very limited experience with woodworking and cabinet making, quality comes at the cost of time.

Most furniture today is "cheap" simply because the bulk of consumers don't demand (i.e. aren't willing to pay for) high quality work. Why have solid hardwood desks with real wood raised panels and dovetail drawers when most customers couldn't care less if their desk is made of veneered particle board and is held together with staples.