Country Furniture Online

Ahh well, this is the time of  year when we are bombarded with adverts for furniture and bedding sales.  Christmas and the New Year period has historically been the time for all the major companies to offload their stock in readiness for the new season designs.  However, with so much more money floating about, families using credit far more than before, they are introducing new designs more often throughout the year.  This has in some way brought many families to the point of wanting to actually stop the merry go round, constantly changing fads and fashions and to actually look out for and cherish real furniture and to surround themselves with quality pieces they can hand on down their own generations.  I love looking through local county magazines – they highlight the joys of country living, showing areas for walking out and really enjoying what life can offer.  They also show very beautiful houses that have stood for many years and are filled with antiques and quality furnishings.   Leaving the quick throw-away cheaply made stuff behind, there is a move back to wanting solid oak and other wood – some antique sale rooms and suppliers can’t keep up with demand, which is fantastic.   Heritage homes help to foster this trend.  Appreciation for real quality.  At last!

Even modern homes feature in lists of heritage properties to visit, along side the established  historic houses.  Our coutry is blessed with thousands of fantastic houses and halls that are open to the public.  For a very modest fee we can wander around – sometimes, and infinitely preferable,  with a guide.  These folk are experts at explaining various aspects about the property  and can bring to life that odd looking tapestry up in the Green Bedroom, or the rather awkward looking portrait in the small Hall .  . . .     I have visited many such houses and as I help out by volunteering at a medium aged Hall, I now like to visit the more modern places just to bring myself up to date with what can be done to save them for the nation also.  The architecture can sometimes jar on the senses but in every case, there is something very special or maybe even unique about the properties which have earmarked them for national interest.  I’m personaly very grateful that we have such august heritage institutions – without them we would probably have no such properties to visit.

The one thing that stands out in heritage properties must be an elegant stair case.  I volunteer at one such property as a room steward and there is half a very ornate stair case going up from the side entrance of the house.  Strangely, the property was never designed to have the main staircase visible from the great hall.  Unlike so many big houses featured in romantic films or ‘upstairs-downstairs life’ serials that grab our attention now.  No, this house always had this spectaular self supporting canilever staircase up to the guest bedrooms but there isn’t another one coming down the other side.  There is a downward staircase but it is pretty plain and just functional.   At the top of the show stopping stairs, there are beautiful pieces of furniture just within sight.  A bureau and very antique chairs.   The whole scene is almost a setting from a tv drams.  We don’t have glorious stair cases in modern houses.  They seem to have been dispensed with and in fact, some modest homes are now installing small lifts from lounge to bedroom, so as not to have to worry about stairs at all.  A death knell sounding for the humble stair case!

I have a friend who owns a village house in France.  It’s way down in the south, near the spanish border in fact and they bought it the other year, having sold their previous rambling farm house in the next village along.  From when they first embarked on this adventure en francaise, they have embraced everything they could about the joy of owning a french home.   They used local labour for all the work to bring the property into this century – the plaster work is fantastic and of course, word gets around that the new folk at willing to use local.  It helped them to make many friends and they are well respected.  The country life suits them – they live six months there and the rest here in a village or at their other place – a smart apartment in London’s dockside.  Knowing how to adapt to each location; how to furnish for the right setting and how to get the most out of suppliers in each location are talents my chum enjoyed by the bucketful!

For those folk lucky enough to own any pieces of antique furniture, perhaps handed down from earlier generations, then they may not feel especially blessed.  After all, if it’s been in the family for centuries, it’s easy to just take it as an everyday job to look and tut!  But looking after antiques properly is so well worth the time and expense.  These wonderful peices of craftsmanship cannot easily be replaced and must be loved whilst we do so.  And encourage the younger generations to also.   The patina on the top surface of a piece buils up over many years – maybe after several hundreds of years.  Even with old marks and damage, it is this that gives real charm and character – adding to the value of it and thus must be preserved.  Good quality beeswax is the only product to use as modern aersol furniture cleaners dammage the delicate surface and can destroy this long developed patina in a matter of weeks.