So the holiday season is just around the corner, and you’re thinking about shopping for something new for your living room, but not sure what to get? Here’s a little story about Amish furniture and an old hutch in my great-grandmother’s living room which might help you in making the right choice for your house.



The memory of my great-grandmother is unforgettable, despite the fact that when I knew her, I was still a young child. As children, my sisters and I would go to her house and she would always welcome us with a hug and some kind of treat or two. Like her hugs and her treats, her house had that same warmth and distinctively sweet flavor, the memory of which has left a permanent and happy mark upon my mind. I remember in particular the old dining room hutch in her salon, a beautiful piece, and a timeless memory. That hutch was the one piece of furniture in her house that we weren’t allowed to touch, and to this day I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was the glass figurines she had inside, and so fearing that we might break them she kept us away. Or perhaps it was the fact that the hutch had been handed down to her from her own mother and from her mother before, and so stood as testimony both to the arts of the past and to our own family tradition.

In the end however, my grandma’s house one day caught on fire. They told me that she had left the burner on and somehow the rest of the house lit up. Fortunately, my great-grandmother was out at the store at the time, but unfortunately the hutch burnt with the house, and that beautiful piece was forever lost to memory—or so we thought.

I can’t really say why, but the hutch has always remained in my mind, perhaps as a memory of my late great-grandmother and her house, or perhaps for some other reason. As it turns out, I was walking down the street one day window shopping when I passed by an Amish handcrafted furniture store, whereupon I was suddenly startled. I was looking at the same hutch, or at least a very similar design! I paused with excitement, then immediately called up my sister who came and just as excitedly viewed this strange and uncanny piece that stood before our eyes.

So naturally I ended up buying the hutch, which wasn’t too expensive since it happened to be a wholesale Amish furniture store, and to this day, it sits in my house and the memory of my great-grandmother is recalled with it, every time I see it.

The moral of the story is that if you’re thinking about getting some new furniture, but you’re unsure of what to get, think about investing in timeless Amish furniture, similar to the hutch in my great-grandmother’s salon. The benefits of such a piece, as you will find, extend way beyond merely the furniture itself—for such handcrafted pieces really do last a lifetime and much more, becoming antiques which we hand down from generation to generation.