An amalgam of online articles these days are determined to find out “the truth about Amish furniture.” The authors and commentators of these articles claim that Amish-made products are nothing more than a PR stunt to fool tourists and internet users into thinking that they’re buying a unique piece of furniture. Amish woodcrafters, they say, don’t actually use traditional techniques. Amish wooden outdoor furniture, they claim, comes out of “Amish shed kits” or “Amish garage kits” and is built by underpaid workers. Don’t buy into the lie.
With that reasoning, we should stop buying diamonds because the gems have been, in the past, linked to conflict in Africa. With that reasoning, we shouldn’t eat fruit because the FDA has discovered that certain harmful insecticides may have been used on young plants. With that reasoning, we shouldn’t bother installing airbags because of the microscopic chance that they could fail to inflate.
Do any of those scenarios make sense? Not really. So why does it make sense to stop buying Amish furniture just because the occasional store in the past has been linked to unethical business practices? It doesn’t make sense.
Buying Amish furniture is just like all of these situations — you should do your research before making decisions about quality and legitimacy. Whether you’re looking for smaller wooden outdoor furniture pieces or big structures like a garage or storage shed, you should do some research first.
Lumping “all Amish built furniture” into one insincere category isn’t just insensitive — it’s inaccurate. If you do your research you’ll find that many stores — both Amish-owned and Amish furniture re-sellers — are legitimate and trustworthy. If you look at the products in person, you’ll see that many are crafted with 100% natural wood. If you talk with Amish outdoor furniture specialists, you can find out how the products are made entirely without electricity.
So in conclusion, no — you shouldn’t buy into the lie. But the lie isn’t that Amish furniture is the biggest ripoff in American history. The lie is that a few bloggers and online writers know more about Amish furniture than the woodcrafters and re-sellers themselves.
Read this for more.
