Entertainment Consoles: Introducing our 21st Century Living

Furniture changes as we do.

Our culture constantly moves and transitions to new popular ideas.

Contemporary Media Stand (shown with Chestnut finish)

Technology has greatly evolved in our living rooms, from once large and bulky television sets to now sleek, thin, lightweight flat screens. Our entertainment products are rapidly changing. Less has become more, and that includes the huge, clunky entertainment consoles finding their way out the door.

Shaker Entertainment Stand (shown with Golden Oak finish)

At Manchester Wood we’ve been designing and prototyping several versions of new entertainment furniture pieces, finalizing with three prized items for any living room.

First, our Shaker Entertainment Console, a shaker inspired conception, but with more flare and creative design, including a center cabinet with open storage space on either side to display your music or film collection.

Farmhouse Media Center (shown with Golden Oak finish)

We continue the country living theme with our next piece, the Farmhouse Media Center. It finds similarity to the Shaker Entertainment Console, but features two cabinets for your collections as well as convenient shelving for your cable box, DVD player, and surround sound controls.

Our Contemporary Media Stand is the most elegant piece of our new installments to entertainment furniture. It’s smooth and lustrous appearance finds appeal far beyond the country living theme. The simplicity and fine detail in design makes this a very alluring item in any room of entertainment.

As three items enter the market, we continue to strive for more in future collection work, but we find pleasure in discussing and providing you the fruit of our labor.

All of our products are proudly made in America with local solid hardwood to boot.
We hope you find what you’re looking for.

To view this collection, click here.

Home Office

There is nothing too exciting for most to talk about when discussing the “Home Office.”

It has become a huge part of our existence though. A necessary step as we continue to grow with technology and work at a near constant. For better or worse.

Our Shaker Desk

As folks that do work at home from time to time, we understand how important the proper setting is for you.

From our Desks to Printer Carts, Bookcases and Stands for further space and inspiration; our items cover a great assortment of the essential fixtures.

Our Home Office Collection features Shaker and Mission furniture styles, a more natural and country accent allowing for a tranquil, peaceful setting in a sometimes hectic work mode.

All our products are solid wood with handcrafted quality at a reasonable price.

We hope this collection reminds you of what’s most important while giving you the proper tools for your ongoing masterpiece in life and work.

Our Console Bookcase

Solid Wood Cherry Furniture

We mentioned earlier in a previous article how we produce much of our furniture with White ash, but we’ve recently stretched further into North American Hardwoods with the use of Cherry.

Although White ash is the “premier species” for strong, durable wood, Cherry has similar attributes, but also carries a beautiful natural finish that White ash has a hard time competing with.

The beauty in finish is not all that makes this wood so remarkable.

Cherry is a prolific seeder.

Not only does it seed well in its current habitat, but it continues to spread in North America as well as into Mexico, even now, Brazil.

It’s a highly prized wood, but only represents a very small percentage of total lumber production.

In fact, its amazing growth in America points to several reasons.

Appalachian Hardwood Manufacturers, Inc. has cited one interesting reason.

They mention that birds help in assuring the fast spreading seeds of future Cherry trees.

The tree provides many birds with a steady diet, but those seeds that drop from the sky tend to find a new home to grow in.

Take a look at our Solid Cherry Collection, and see how beautiful this wood is.

We also thank the birds and other natural cycles that have allowed this tree to grow to our present use and continuing prevalence.

Kids Furniture!

Children tend to be the forefront of most lives, and for good reason.

They’re our future, reflected beings of us, carrying on the ancient tradition.

We need them, and they need us.

Sometimes I wonder if we need them more.

Encouraging active participation from our kids is extremely important. Whether it’s to build their budding confidence, engaging in something with elders, or preparing them for the unexpected.

At Manchester Wood we started a Kids line not just because we love them, but also because they wanted to sit in an Adirondack Chair like Mom and Dad!

So after popular kid demand, we’ve introduced the Kid’s Adirondack Chair and Kid’s Morris Chair, partnered products to the grown-up pieces.

The line has continued to grow, and will over the next years to come.

Check out our Kids section by clicking here, I hope they find what they need!

A Manchester Wood Collection: Jelly Cabinets

The land in America is abundant, no doubt about that.

Early in the 19^th century the United States started to find it’s identity.

Immigrants, stragglers, hustlers, and revelers looking to answer this thing we call Life.

Ready to grab it by the horns, and ride it   to death, laughing in victory.

Jelly Cupboards and Cabinets became a household staple to our early pilgrimage.

The popularity of the item grew from New England, spreading as far West it could.

It wasn’t a hard sales pitch.

By 1830, everyone seemed to be eating jelly.

Grape, Mint, even Jalapeno jelly in the Southwest would find storage in the kitchen.

At Manchester Wood we participate in the tradition of Jelly Cabinets, and are proud to offer these pieces, a part of early American culture.

Click here to see our collection.

Where do you put your stuff?

“That’s all your house is, it’s a pile of stuff with a cover on it…”

George Carlin jokingly (perhaps not) once conveyed about our lives.

We all, generally speaking, do love stuff, and we do need places for that stuff.

Our Storage Solutions line is our answer to that call.

We’ve focused on space efficiency and functionality along with style in storing items. From the early stages of our company we produced the popular Multipurpose Cart, a Periodical End Table with Magazine Rack, and more recently our deceiving stuff holding piece, the Chairside Storage Table. Perfect for hiding away most possessions in a classy end table fashion.

“The Mill,” which is what most of our employees call our factory, is located near one of the richest slate deposits in the World. Glacial masses imprinted our land with beautifully colored slate thousands of years ago, leaving us to work with it.

We’ve used local slate on many pieces of furniture, and one of those pieces includes the Slate Top Console Table. It’s a magnificent piece of furniture with great storage capacity.

So that’s our take on stuff, although it doesn’t define us, we do like holding onto things we cherish, which reaches far beyond furniture… and stuff.

Check out our Storage Solutions section here.

Ups and Downs: Life at “The Mill”

I’ve just started painting our lunchroom. Revamping it after years of hard use.

It’s amazing how many moving parts there are at a factory. The constant motions, change, fixing, rebuilding, but the community of it, remains the same forever.

Sure like every relationship, it has its ups and downs, hard times and good.

It helps when something comes along and humbles you. Waking you up from the everyday repetitive loop you can linger in.

Last week, we had a spontaneous combustion fire here at “the mill,” our factory and home to more than fifty employees.

The event surely humbled and awoke us.

We were very fortunate, walking away with minimal damage.

Life can remind you in harsh and subtle ways that in fact it can end or change at any moment.

On that dreaded Sunday night, anxiously racing over, we found several employees coming in at different times to help.

No time cards clocked, working into the late hours of the night only to be back Monday morning, just a  few short hours later.

This week we wish to thank all of our employees for their dedication to Manchester Wood. Also to all manufacturing companies in America who fight everyday to survive in our country.

To the hardworking and downtrodden, your fellow man thanks you.

Also to our Mother Earth for giving us such amazing resources!

The Re-invention of Old: TV Tray Tables

America’s Wood

One of those early American settlers was “Bud” Hillerich. In 1880, at 14, he’d begin to learn his father, Johann Fredrich Hillerich trade by serving as an apprentice in his woodworking shop.
His father went mostly by J.F. Hillerich, and was a German born citizen, looking for a fresh start in America. He was proud of his young boy, and let him work on side projects in his shop.

At 18, Bud went to work on a baseball bat for the company’s first professional ballplayer, Pete Browning, who played for the Louisville Eclipse. Browning nicknamed the bat “The Louisville Slugger.”

The popularity grew, orders started coming in all over the country. Johann changed the woodshops name to “J.F. Hillerich & Son.” “The Louisville Slugger,” baseball’s premier bat, was born.
From Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, to today’s stars, “The Louisville Slugger” remains the prized possession of the best hitters in Baseball.
What does this have to do with Manchester Wood and our furniture? We use the same sturdy, long lasting White Ash in our furniture as they’ve used all these years on their bats.
White ash is considered the “premiere species” of North American ashes, for being hard, strong, exceeding bending qualities, and easily worked in our mill.
“The Louisville Slugger,” web site states, “Pound per pound, ash is the strongest timber available. Ash has a flexibility that isn’t found in other timbers like maple. It tends to flex rather than break, which gives a strong ‘sweet spot’ in terms of breakage. Ash is lighter than maple, giving a wider range of large barrel models.”

Although we don’t use our durable, long-last White Ash for home runs at the ballpark, we do on our indoor items, giving customers products lasting for generations at a fair price.