office
Congrats to Wall Goldfinger: Maker of America’s Finest Luxury Office Furniture
Remember that movie, "A River Runs Through It" with Brad Pitt? Well that pretty much sums up the story of Wall Goldfinger a year ago when Hurricane Irene ravaged through Vermont devestating hundreds of homes and businesses.
WallGoldfinger sat along the Dog River which jumped it's banks, blew out their back door and filled the shop with 7 feet of water in just 10 minutes. Imagine a river– all of a sudden being re-routed through your workshop!
So today we're sending congratulations out to our friends and fellow furniture makers at this premier luxury office furniture company in Randolf, Vermont. They have risen from the ashes and emerged bigger, better and stronger than before. How inspiring!
Check out Wall Goldfinger on the web or view a video about their story on Vermont's WCAX TV.
Editor's note: If you're looking for high end office furniture but you're not calling from the White House or Wall Street, you might have a look at the luxury home office furniture collections at Vermont Woods Studios. Here you'll find the same impeccable Vermont craftsmanship but on a decidedly smaller scale.
New Modular Corner Desk Workstations by Copeland
When I started Vermont Woods Studios Fine Furniture I was working out of my home office and seven years later I still spend a good part of my workday here. So I'm always interested to see what new furniture is coming out for home offices.
Copeland Furniture has recently brought out a couple new workstations: the Sarah Modular Corner Desk with Rolling File and Return and the Berkeley Desk w/ Organizer & Return shown here.
These solid wood workstations are designed in an "L" shape to fit in a corner space but they are modular and versatile so you can change them around as your needs change. I've seen the return desk used as a sofa table and it worked beautifully.
Check them out. A handmade, solid wood workstation in your office upgrades the whole experience of working at home.
Earth Day Challenge: Get Green Office Certified
Earth Day is just one week away, on Sunday Aprill 22, 2012. At Vermont Woods Studios we're encouraging our customers, craftspeople, vendors and friends to Green-up their Workplaces by instituting earth-friendly office policies like going paperless, recycling, using compact fluorescent lightbulbs, buying Energy Star rated equipment and so on.
You can celebrate Earth Day by virtually attending our Green-up Your Workplace Challenge on Facebook. It's just a click of your mouse and we'll plant a tree for each person who "attends" the event.
So here's today's Earth-friendly tip: get your office "green certified". It's easy- nothing too official but I think it's worth doing, if just for the insight you'll get as you think through your answers to the certification questions.
The process was developed by GreenLine Paper Company. There are 24 questions on your office energy use, building construction, office supplies, waste reduction/recycling and transportation, which will determine your score. It only takes 5 minutes to complete and it's a great (and Free) way to show the world that you are making an effort to be sustainable and environmentally conscientious. Check it out and let us know how you score!
Earth Day Challenge: Bring A Re-Usable Water Bottle To Work
Here's Manjula, Shannon and Douglas at our last Vermont Woods Studios staff meeting. I'm happy to note they all have re-usable water bottles in hand (although they're all making fun of me for taking a picture of it).
Anyway, as part of our Earth Day Green Up Your Workplace Challenge, we're trying to persuade you to bring a re-usable water bottle to work instead of buying drinks at the vending machine.
Here's a couple reasons why:
- This year more than 25 billion disposable, single use plastic water bottles will be sold in the United States alone (that's 2 million every 5 minutes!) and more than 80 percent of those will end up being disposed of rather than being recycled
- Over 1.5 million barrels of oil were used to make thees plastic bottles-–and that doesn’t include the petroleum used to transport them. That’s enough petroleum to power 100,000 automobiles for a year! (Dave Chameides discusses these and more reasons to give up reusable bottles at Care2.com)
So even though we can transform disposable, single-use plastic bottles into beautiful Polywood outdoor furniture like the recycled plastic Adirondack chairs we're sitting in here, there are still 22 billion bottles that end up in landfills or polluting our oceans every year. Check out this video on ocean plastic pollution to learn more. Then be sure to attend (virtually, of course– it only takes a mouse click) our Green-Up Your Workplace Challenge on Facebook and see if you can persuade your co-workers to give up disposable plastic bottle for good!
HGTV: Got Any Green Home Office Ideas for Earth Day?
I am ashamed to say that my home office decor is deplorable. You can see it in this video taken last year when I had 6 other people working in it with me.
So with our Green-up Your Workplace Challenge coming up for Earth Day, I decided to look for green design ideas to spif it up with eco-friendly home office furniture, lighting and accessories.
I started looking for ideas at HGTV and was delighted to find they are showcasing over 125 home office design ideas submitted by homeowners and interior designers.
They've got modern home offices, eclectic home offices, traditional home offices, contemporary home offices, arts and crafts home offices, cottage home offices, tropical home offices, English country home offices, transitional home offices, mid-century modern and even Mediterranean home offices.
I hope they add a green home office project with all natural, all American made wooden office furniture: desks, file cabinets, credenza, occasional tables and chairs (maybe even using reclaimed, recycled barnwood). Then add in organic cotton rugs, draperies and upholstery, energy efficient electronics, light bulbs, light fixtures and maybe even FSC certified wood flooring. That would be a good project to post on Earth Day, HGTV. Just a suggestion.
Copeland Fine Furniture: Coming To Vermont Woods Studios Soon!
UPDATE:
Copeland Furniture is now available at Vermont Woods Studios. Browse through our collection of:
Copeland Bedroom Furniture
Copeland Home Office Furniture
Copeland TV-Media Furniture and
Copeland Dining Furniture
Customize Copeland Furniture online or give us a call with your questions.
Customers have been asking us for a wider selection of sustainable Vermont made furniture so we've been travelling all around our state in search of the next furniture company to feature on our website. Last week Dennis and Douglas made a trip up to Bradford, VT to meet with Joann Phelps and the Copeland Furniture crew. We've been admiring the work of this family-owned company for many years and are proud to announce we will soon be carrying their full line of Vermont made furniture including the Frank Lloyd Wright® collection.
We're working on getting their fine furniture up on our website now and plan to have everything ready by the end of this year. In the meantime, we are already taking orders so feel free to call us and discuss your (100% American Made) Copeland Furniture needs. We thank Tim and Ben Copeland for including Vermont Woods Studios in the Copeland Furniture retailer family.
Drinking On The Job
Can you believe this? I leave the office for a few hours and Douglas and Manjula immediately break out the booze. Pretty sad state of affairs at Vermont Woods Studios, isn't it?
You'll notice Rebecca and Dennis aren't too impressed.
OK, actually we were celebrating meeting an impossible goal we set for ourselves at the beginning of the year, so we thought we would indulge in a little champagne that day. And some key lime pie that Dennis's wife, Susan kindly made for us (thank you Susan).
We even pulled Ken away from his post-surgery routine and sat him down to celebrate too. No arm twisting necessary.
Now it's back to work and I have to say that for the most part, we have fun doing it. I'm so impressed with our team (Douglas, Manjula, Rebecca, Dennis, Shannon). They are brilliant and creative and determined — so much so that I feel certain we'll have another reason to be drinking on the job again soon. Thanks, Everyone!
Oh… I guess I should say that if you look real close, you'll see the second bottle in the photo is sparkling grape juice… just so I don't get any of our teatotalers in trouble 
)
Shaker Furniture
Vermont has a long history of designing and building Shaker style furniture, which is surprising to some because Vermont really wasn't a hub of the original American Shaker settlements that date back to 1774. But somehow the craftsmanship and philosophy behind Shaker furniture did take root and spread throughout Vermont during subsequent years and it is alive and well today.
We've gathered together some of the finest Shaker style furniture made in Vermont and indeed anywhere in the world. We sorted it by room:
- Shaker Bedroom Furniture
- Shaker Dining Furniture
- Shaker Living Room Furniture
- Shaker Home Office Furniture
and by style/collection:
- Vermont Shaker Furniture
- American Shaker Furniture
- Classic Shaker Furniture
- New England Shaker Furniture
- Renfrew Shaker Furniture
You'll see that the our Shaker furniture as with the originals is largely based on the concepts
of order, utility and durability. Initially the Shakers discarded any unnecessary ornament at all, focusing only on clean lines, simple form and proportion. Our furniture makers have stayed pretty close to those traditional Shaker ideals although you'll see slight embellishments here and there that serve to enhance the style and add visual appeal.
Let us know if you have any questions about our Shaker beds and night stands, Shaker chests, Shaker dressers and mirrors, Shaker armoires, Shaker china cabinets, Shaker dining tables or Shaker dining chairs.
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