First, let me thank you for your interest in our furniture.
My name is David Louden, I am the creator of this line of hand-made furniture and the owner of The Louden Furniture Company.
I guess the best place to start with our story is at the beginning. In 1991, I started a one man refinishing shop in Roswell, Ga called The Woodworks. I had worked at several refinishing shops in Atlanta, Ga. and had learned the trade well enough, I felt, to strike out on by own. I did all types of furniture restoration on all types of furniture – everything from stripping and refinishing and making replacement pieces to regluing chairs and faux painting. It was during this time that I began to truly appreciate the beauty and simplicity of Early American Country furniture. As the years went by and I began to build furniture and cabinetry as well as the restoration. The pieces I would build were almost always inspired by Early American pieces that I had seen. In 1992, my wife and I moved to Dawsonville, Georgia. Aside from now building as much custom hand-made furniture as I did furniture restoring, nothing else had really changed; it was still just me. I had found that over all the years of working by myself, I had become a bit set in my ways. The old saying “if you want it done right, then do it yourself”, became more than just a rule of thumb but more like a way of life, I preferred it that way.
In the back of my mind I had always thought I might like to one day develop a small line of reproduction furniture to market. Being a one man show however, would make this very difficult and the line of furniture would have to be very, very small. Also, I never found the idea of having to put on a crew and all the headaches that come with employees very appealing so I would always quickly dismiss that idea. The other problem with this idea is that I never enjoyed building the same piece twice – that would be a big problem! With all these self-imposed “obstacles” in my way it never seemed like such a great idea.
That all changed when I meet John Miller in 2006. John is an Amish man that lives in Northern Kentucky. I had been introduced to John by mutual Amish friends in Western New York where I am originally from. At the time I had been buying Amish made Bent Hickory rocking chairs in New York and reselling them here in Georgia. John was a lot closer in Kentucky and his rockers were, in my opinion, much nicer and better built, so I started buying my rockers from John. After just a few trips up to Kentucky to buy rockers, a friendship developed between our two families and we always looked forward to spending time with our new friends.
It was on one of these trips while visiting, John mentioned that although he enjoyed building rockers and all the interesting woodworking projects he did, he would really like to do what I do – build Early American reproduction furniture. Now let me say that John is an excellent craftsman and certainly possesses the necessary skills to build whatever kind of furniture he would like. The problem for him would be that given his rural location and lack of access to medias like telephones and the internet, it would be difficult to ever do just that. That got me thinking…
Long story short, it didn’t take long to figure out that for the cost of a big covered trailer and a short road trip, I could possibly make my dream of having my own line of American Country furniture come true! With John building most of the pieces for me, I wouldn’t have to worry at all about the craftsmanship and attention to detail these pieces would need if this were going to work – John is great craftsman. If I didn’t have to physically build each piece this would free me up to focus on the paints, finishes, marketing and oh yeah, creating new pieces!
Finally, in 2011, Tom Kassab joined our team as National Marketing Manager, further freeing me up to concentrate on the creativity, while he has been instrumental in expanding our reach with nationwide delivery and helping with a much more visible internet presence… not to mention, he has a cool professional way of talking me “down off the ledge” from time to time!
Lastly, the beauty of this arrangement with both John and Tom is, I didn’t have to hire a crew and for now I am able to keep it just me with their invaluable help.
Well, that’s where we are today. Still very much in the beginning stages but excited and optimistic about our future. Thanks again for your interest in our hand-made furniture and thanks for stopping by!
— David L. Louden