Why American? Why Vintage? So many of my customers know this answer but many are drawn to the attractive pages of the Pottery Barn Catalogue. Their look is polished, sleek and clean yet homey at the same time. Many of their pieces evoke a vintage American feeling. But there is one striking yet elusive secret about Pottery Barn and the look alike knock offs of this furniture giant. The American vintage looking furnishings and home deor are all made in China or Southeast Asia. Instead of kiln dried wood from America’s hardwood forests the pieces are constructed of quickly grown “wet” wood or worse yet particle board or paper wood.
What is paper wood? Paper wood is what I call the substance created when the manufactures of Pottery Barn and similar modern furniture companies adhere numerous pieces of paper together to form what appears at first glance to be a piece of wood. You know it is not wood the first time you bang the corner of a sideboard or hit the bottom of a console table with the vacuum. Did you ever try to scrub glitter glue off of the top of a Pottery barn farm table? Because as soon as you get below the pretty painted surface you realize that wood does not lie underneath. The corners bend and dent with the smallest ding because the paper wood is very soft. The painted surface cracks open and reveals a corner with layers of paper glued together. What looks like thin cardboard is kind of hanging out there flapping in the wind. It does not display the charming appearance of a naturally distressed painted piece from the 1800 or even the 1980’s.
Did your teenager spill nail polish remover on your American Vintage Dining room table? Did your two year old drive a matchbox truck across your mahogany coffee table and leave a deep scratch? What can you do? Sand it down and restrain it. The American Kiln dried wood is thick and solid. It can be sanded down time and again. You can’t sand glued up cardboard – impossible.
I once bought a used Pottery Barn farm table. The top had some scratches on it and a lot of crayon and glitter glue. I figured it was an easy job to clean it up and restore the finish with a quick wipe of Howard’s Wood restorer. No way! The crayon and glitter glue would not come off and any attempt to put the stain in the scratches caused the stain to bead up on the top of the table. Sanding didn’t help matters as I quickly got to a non wood substance that could not be re-stained of painted
Does NEW fine Furniture have the same problems as Pottery Barn Furniture?
One of my customers told me about the problems with their brand new, outrageously expensive, four poster bed from “Baker Furniture Co.” It had been purchased at a top of the line furniture company in Delaware called Pala Brothers. After the couple go their bed, winter came the heat went on and the posts of the bed warped and twisted and cracked!! Of course the company did replace the posts eventually but why would something like that happen?
Baker Furniture was one of the premier American furniture companies. Their pieces were extremely well crafted. Many pieces were museum reproduction. The name was affiliated with quality. In the 1990’s the company gave up their American production and moved all of their manufacturing to China. The look and the price remained high end but the quality suffered. Because Baker is a high priced brand the company did take steps to improve the quality but how could it ever begin to match the
American history of exceptionalism.