Red Cortner doesn’t think living in a small town should mean living with a small selection.

“Because we live in Craig, we don’t have to have a limited availability,” Cortner said.

Improving the furniture selection in Craig was part of the reason Cortner recently opened a second location of Homemaker Furnishings.

The second location, downtown at the corner of Sixth Street and Yampa Avenue, has the same kind of merchandise as the original Homemaker, 468 Ranney St. Read more »

Hollywood has agents, the NBA has the draft, and banking has campus recruiting. But if you’re a young American furniture designer looking for a big break, you’re on your own — until now.

This year’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair, the burgeoning design industry event held in New York each May, will for the first time include a juried program meant to help promising young designers connect with manufacturers. Called ICFF Studio, it provides U.S. designers the support European designers already enjoy — in the form of government grants and industry advice provided by organizations including the Italian Trade Commission, the Danish Consulate General, and Valorization of Innovation in Furnishing (VIA), in France.

“New talent is the most important thing for us to (be able to) run a viable company on the vehicle of design, as opposed to commodity,” explains Jerry Helling, creative director of the North Carolina-based furniture company Bernhardt Design, who conceived of ICFF Studio, and is sponsoring it, along with George Little Management, which produces the fair. Helling adds: “ICFF Studio is helping stand behind that, helping industrial designers, and helping the design community — which elevates everything, and ultimately makes the general public more aware of design, and less likely to buy the cheapest piece of furniture they can find.” Read more »

What you need — For bunny plate: small paper plate, pink and white construction paper, scissors, black marker, scissors and glue stick.

For bunny nut cup: pink and white construction paper, two small plastic cups, scissors, glue dots, and narrow ribbon.

How to make — Bunny Plate: Fold paper plate in half. Cut ears from white construction paper. From pink construction paper cut two pieces for inside of ear. Glue the pink part of the ear to the white part of ear. Glue to center of plate just behind fold. Cut two circles about the size of quarters from the pink construction paper for cheeks. Use decorative scissors if desired. Glue cheeks to front of plate. Cut a small triangle from pink paper and glue between cheeks. Draw eyes, mouth and whiskers with marker. Glue white pompom to back of plate for tail. Read more »

One Liberty Properties Inc., a New York-based real estate investment trust, paid $51.2 million for 11 retail furniture stores.

The properties, comprising a total of 612,130 square feet, are in Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia, One Liberty said Friday.

The properties are net leased on a long-term basis to Haverty Furniture Companies Inc.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International

Attorney General Tom Reilly filed a consumer protection lawsuit Friday against a closed baby furniture store chain and its owner, alleging customers who made deposits on furniture have not received deliveries or refunds.

Boston Baby took more than $400,000 in deposits from more than 400 customers in the weeks before closing, but has not delivered, or in some cases ordered, the furniture, according to Reilly. The lawsuit also alleges the stores did not let customers know that the stores were closing or provide customer service afterward. Read more »

A READER wrote about an antique whose style goes back to the final years of Queen Victoria’s reign in Great Britain.

In the late 1800s, as the Machine Age was abounding, some artisans scorned such technology. Hand craftsmanship was practically dying out when the British Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society was created in 1888. This event started the Arts and Crafts Movement, which venerated hand craftsmanship and brought about several furniture styles, including Craftsman/Mission/Mission Oak.

William Morris (1834-1896), abhorring the Industrial Revolution, wrote the premier Arts and Crafts manifesto in 1879, The Art of the People. His firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. was founded in 1861 and became celebrated for high-end handcrafted wallpaper and fabrics.

Morris also invented in 1865 a chair that was the great-grandfather of modern recliners. His comfy innovation in an era of uncomfortable furnishings became known as Morris chairs and made the designer a legend. Read more »

The 3rd national furniture fair that began on Tuesday in the city’s Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar and is scheduled to end today gave an opportunity to the visitors to have a look at how furniture has developed as an industry over the period in the country and is now poised to enter the international market.

With 37 stalls in all, the 5-day fair has displayed varieties of high quality locally produced furniture to decorate drawing rooms, bed rooms, dining rooms besides offices, conference-rooms, hospitals and others dragging almost all categories of would-be buyers with all the temptations. The Commerce Minister inaugurated the fair that has been organised by Bangladesh Furniture Industry Owners’ Association (BFIOA) jointly with ‘Design and Technology Centre and has drawn large numbers of visitors in the last two days as reported by the press.

The furniture industry, though still fledgling, has developed a lot in the recent years and stepped into the export market gradually coming out of the cottage era with leading manufacturers planning joint efforts to exploit export potentials as they feel that Bangladesh’s furniture has already attained global standards in quality and design. The fair amply provided that opportunity, obviously, to have a glimpse of such quality and design that could gain foothold in world market. What they allege is that the local products face uneven and unfair competition even in the domestic market as imported ones sell at cheaper rates, as importers in many cases “evade duties and taxes”. Read more »

A HEXHAM councillor and the town’s traders have hit out at possible conversion plans for the former furniture store in Tesco’s car park.

The supermarket giant has lodged a formal application with Tynedale Council to lift a condition which stipulates that the two-storey building can only be used to sell furniture.

It is seeking permission for the building – which has generated a large interest from national companies – to be used to sell ‘bulky goods’.

This could be virtually anything – from electrical goods to tools or bikes.

Coun. Terry Robson urged fellow members of Hexham Town Council’s planning committee to object to the plans.

He told his colleagues Tesco already had “a big enough bite of the cherry.”

He said: “Speaking for the traders of the town, and on emotional grounds, I think we should ensure that it remains only for furniture.”

The committee decided to send no objection to Tynedale Council planners, but fishmonger Kirsty Cruickshank, in the Market Place, has lodged a letter of objection.

She said: “The small traders rely on a good retail mix in the town centre.

“The development of this site could put it in direct competition with some of the traders in the town centre.

“Ultimately, if shops shut and we have a boarded up ghost town, we will not be able to win competitions such as Britain in Bloom and favourite market town in the future.”

A Tesco spokesman said there was no user for the store yet.

He said the company was seeking to have the condition lifted to make the building more attractive to potential retailers interested in moving into the area.

hexham-courant.co.uk

The Furniture Homestores of Southern California unit of Wisconsin-based Ashley Furniture has signed a 10-year, $7.6 million lease for 61,541 sf of showroom space at Arden Realty’s Savi Tech Center at 22705 Savi Ranch Parkway. The showroom will be the second in Orange County for the furniture company, which opened its first showroom in the county in Fountain Valley.

Ashley is expected to move into its new space in the third quarter, occupying what formerly was a research and development facility. Arden’s in-house construction team is working with Ashley Furniture Homestores to redevelop the space to accommodate the showroom.

The Ashley Showroom space represents approximately 17% of the total at Savi Tech Center, which is approximately 360,000 sf in four buildings. The development was originally designed and built as an R&D project and was occupied by R&D type companies. Read more »

Symetri Corp. will partner with a New York newsletter and retail event specialist to provide Internet marketing services to the home furnishings industry, the company has announced.

Symetri is a Greensboro-based Internet marketing firm specializing in interactive marketing, search engine optimization, Web site tracking and other functions.

Ron Jones Jr., president of Symetri, said the partnership with BailComm provides access to that company’s extensive experience with furniture retailers and others in the industry. Read more »