![\"IMG_3241\"](\"http:\/\/www.vintageamericanhome.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/IMG_32411-300x224.jpg\")
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Actually my dad bought my mom a Lane \u201cHope Chest\u201d in the 1940\u2019s.\u00a0 It was always a\u00a0 treasured piece of furniture in our home and my mom kept all of her most precious mementos in this chest.\u00a0 At some point in the 1970\u2019s she painted it blue as was the style.\u00a0 She eventually gave her hope chest to me,\u00a0 my husband stripped it and returned it to its original stain.\u00a0 We gave it to our daughter in 2011 when she graduated from James Madison University,\u00a0 which\u00a0 ironically is located near\u00a0 the original site of the Lane Furniture Co.\u00a0 Sadly that same year, 2011, Lane Furniture company made their last \u201chope Chest\u201d.\u00a0 The chest was in the little museum in Alta Vista, Va..<\/p>\n
This story is\u00a0 a little sad isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 But there is\u00a0 a silver lining in every dark cloud.\u00a0 Guess what? The chest my Dad gave my mom is still here.\u00a0 It has as\u00a0 much life in it as the day it was made.\u00a0 It\u00a0 can be painted, stained, stripped and repainted.\u00a0 It can get banged up and scratched and re-sanded.\u00a0 The same can not be true for the Pottery Barn chest or any other piece of modern replica furniture.\u00a0 First of all it would never have lasted that long. Pottery Barn is meant to be replaced often.\u00a0 You can\u2019t strip a piece of furniture made from \u201cPaper wood\u201d.\u00a0 You can\u2019t sand it. You can\u2019t re stain it and you can\u2019t paint it again.\u00a0 But there are plenty of original Lane Hope chests around that you can sand, stain or paint.\u00a0 American vintage furniture lets you create your own\u00a0 family keepsake and stories.\u00a0 You can hand down Vintage American furniture for many, many years to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently attended a wedding in the old fashioned town of Alta Vista in Virginia.\u00a0 There was a little museum there which featured the story of the Lane Furniture Company.\u00a0 The family owned business began in the 1800\u2019s and reached it\u2019s hey day in the 1920\u2019s – 1940\u2019s.\u00a0 Lane was known for it \u2018s cedar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vintageamericanhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4003"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vintageamericanhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vintageamericanhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vintageamericanhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vintageamericanhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.vintageamericanhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4004,"href":"http:\/\/www.vintageamericanhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4003\/revisions\/4004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vintageamericanhome.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"IMG_3244\"](\"http:\/\/www.vintageamericanhome.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/IMG_3244.jpg\")
<\/a>which was a gift for a newly betrothed woman.\u00a0 She was to place all of her treasures that she was saving for her future marriage in this chest.\u00a0 Popular advertisements in Life magazine featured WWII G. I.\u2019s far from home saving money and purchasing their girl a Lane \u201cHope chest\u201d .\u00a0 The girls in the ads had stars in their eyes\u00a0 and took this as a sign of true love.\u00a0 The sale of Lane \u201chope chests\u201d sky rocketed.\u00a0 All Lane chests were handed down from mother to daughter or grand mother to grand daughter.<\/p>\n