On Monday, May 25th the Furnish Green showroom will be CLOSED for Memorial Day, so we will be having an ONLINE-ONLY storewide sale! Everything will be an additional 18% off! Use coupon code: beachday. Sale starts at midnight on Sunday night.
Peruse our inventory here!
We’re on the cusp of the summer season, and in New York City, that means it’s time to ship out! And perfect timing because we just brought a ton of vintage suitcase into the showroom! In a variety of sizes and colors, they’re sure to suit your travel needs.
While you can use them to vacation in style, they’re also great for DIY projects. Stack them and make a one-of-a-kind side table, or use one as a cozy cat bed. They’re also great as prop pieces or for under-the-bed storage. Oh the possibilities!
Take a look at our suitcase inventory here!
It’s somewhat unusual for us to carry rugs in our showroom… we just don’t typically see them come through. But this week we received a handful of lovely decorative area rugs with intricate patterns and vibrant colors. To top it off, they’re all in good condition! They vary in size, but are all rather small ranging from about 3 x 2 feet to about 3 x 5 feet. Great sizes to bring a bit of warmth and character to your apartment without covering all of your floors, hardwood or otherwise.
An area rug can really complete your space, so find a one that suits your home!
The ‘barrister bookcase’ is a special storage piece that enters the Furnish Green showroom every once in a blue moon. It is well-loved and sought after because of its unique and very functional construction. While we at Furnish Green love these pieces as much as the next guy, we didn’t necessarily know the story behind their interesting shelf structure. Here’s what we found:
A barrister is a member of one of the classes of lawyers found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. They require the use of many law books and may frequently move to new chambers. As a result, a specialized form of portable bookcase was developed to meet their needs.
A barrister’s bookcase consists of several separate shelf units that may be stacked together to form a cabinet. When moving chambers, each shelf is carried separately without needing to remove its contents and becomes a carrying-case full of books. As the shelves are meant to be separated, an “up and over” door mechanism is used on each shelf, allowing the individual doors to pull up and slide in to display the contents.
Each shelf of a true barrister’s bookcase must be portable with a heavy load of books. The more robust examples have folding handles at the ends of each shelf. Modern “decorator” copies of these may look the same, but are often too lightly constructed to be carried while loaded, or may even be a single fixed case like a normal bookcase, but with separate doors on each shelf to give the appearance of a barrister’s bookcase.
Recently in the showroom (it has since sold) we had an industrial version of the classic Barrister. Check it out.
The Furnish Green showroom will be closing at 7:30PM tonight, April 30th. We apologize for any inconvenience!
I want to welcome everyone to the first post of A Record Blog. This is a recurring blog feature that will cover all things records and mostly will highlight the vinyl we carry in our showroom. Some of you may not know this, but, alongside our vintage furniture stock, we carry an affordable vinyl record selection. Our collection spans most genres of music covering rock, r&b, jazz, soul, country, disco and rap. All records are reasonably priced with a $1 section to boot! Make sure to stay tuned for the occasional record sale here and there. If you are interested in inventory updates and sales please email us c/o (Tim Vinyl) in the email subject to furnishgreen@gmail.com. Happy digging!
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The Band: The Sweet
The Sweet is a pretty amazing glam rock band from the UK that formed in the early 1970s. They sound like Queen and T. Rex dry humping. I really didn’t know much about this band growing up aside from them being “that band whose song was featured in Wayne’s World” where Tia Carrere and her band Crucial Taunt played it throughout the whole movie. The song was “Ballroom Blitz” and it is quite an epic and incredible tune! Perfect for nostalgic roller/ice skating parties or crashing your car into a brick wall at a high velocity of speed on speed.
I was told by a friend of mine to give The Sweet a chance while record shopping in Pittsburgh back in the day. The idea was intriguing but the band still didn’t appeal to me. At this point I had discovered a few more of their hits (“Love Is Like Oxygen” and “Little Willy”). It was not until hearing the heavy rotation of The Sweet on one of my favorite radio shows turned live/archived podcast, which I will dive into after I tell you why you need this record. The lp we have for sale is a collection of some of The Sweet’s finest songs. The pressing is from 1973 from the Bell record label. Bell Records released a lot of popular rock and roll and R&B music with acts such as Gary Glitter and the Bay City Rollers, but I am most familiar with The Delfonics releases coming out through Bell. This collection comes equipped with “Little Willy,” “Wig-Wam Bam” and “Blockbuster”! This comp is a great window into the discography of The Sweet, and the vinyl and sleeve are both in excellent condition! We have it priced at $15 and it’s ready to move onto someone’s home platter.
The Sweet pops back into my life:
The first time I heard The Sweet’s “Blockbuster” was on a radio broadcast of The Best Show on WFMU! The sirens went off and I was hooked. Aside from “Action”, this single went on to become one of the staple anthems of The Best Show. This 3 hour comedy/call in show out of New Jersey has gained worldwide popularity with fans calling in from all over the globe. You can tune in for the live broadcast every Tuesday from 9pm-Midnight or download the podcast from iTunes after each episode airs.
More about The Best Show:
The Best Show was created by writer/comedian/music video director/lender of voice, Tom Scharpling, and his comedic partner/all star drummer Jon Wurster (Superchunk/Bob Mould/Mountain Goats). It’s hard to really explain this show, but, essentially, it provides its listeners with a sense of escape and community in the three hours of music, comedy and general topic discussion. The show features steady appearances from characters like the brash furry comedian Gary the Squirrel to the eclectic motley crew of Wurster’s characters and regular callers . I highly recommend checking out this show as it just might be the keystone missing in your life.
Aside from the weekly aired The Best Show, Scharpling and Wurster currently have an amazing box set out on the Numero Group label that documents over 20 hours of comedy. The box set features Wurster’s innumerable call-ins to The Best Show under the guise of hundreds of fictional characters from the imaginary town of Newbridge, NJ. The amount of care and precision that went into this thing is amazing.
*You can learn more about this box set here and Tom Scharpling’s The Best Show here.
Stay tuned for further posts from A Record Blog!
We have tons of ladders in stock right now, and not only do they look cool, but they also have great functionality… especially when it comes to Do It Yourself projects! They can be used for anything from plant or clothing display (possibly in a retail location) to a full-fledged wall unit storage piece (shown here).
View our assorted ladder collection here.
As Spring arrives, classes come to an end… Whether you’re moving off campus or just looking to add a bit of character to a typically stark and bland dorm room, we’ve got you covered! AND we’re looking to save all of you impoverished students a bit of money by offering 22% off everything in our showroom!
Please show valid student ID to receive discount. Offer ends May 31st. In store ONLY.
**Please Note: Discount applies to first-time customers ONLY.
For this Dwellings post, we delve into the center of New York City. Adam, a local bartender, has been shopping with Furnish Green for about a year and currently resides in Midtown Manhattan. It’s an extremely industrial area, so you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find an apartment with so much character. The space has original hardwood floors and crown molding and features a beautifully ornate fireplace mantel… So meet Adam, and enjoy the space!
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How did you end up in this apartment?
I was looking at a studio in Chelsea that advertised a wood burning fireplace, so obviously I went to check it out. To my excited surprise it actually worked. The rest of the place was a shit hole but it definitely gave me the idea. Anyway, I had some time to really look around before my lease was up so I decided, at least for a while, to ONLY look for places with wood burning fireplaces. This drew some strange reactions from a lot of realtors. I remember being in one guy’s office and he was just screwing me around, telling me what I wanted to hear and being full of shit. I yelled “Listen buddy, I don’t want to look at anything that doesn’t have a god dammed wood burning fireplace in it!” Then a sort of hush fell over the whole office and everyone just stared at us in, I guess, disbelief. You could hear a pin drop! It was absolutely ridiculous. An absurd demand. Somewhat out of character for me, but I was so frustrated with this guy. It just all came out.
Do you have a design style that you’re going for?
Not particularly. Everything basically revolved around the fireplace. Dark and cozy I suppose. My roommate, Brian and I both work crazy late hours, so when either of us gets home it’s usually already light out. It’s nice to pull down the blinds and relax a little without feeling too abnormal. Also, there’s something comforting about sitting in front of a crackling fire on a freezing January morning, delighting in the knowledge that the moron that puked in the corner of the bar last night is beginning their day with a top-five-hangovers-of-all-time and is about to get a good ass-chewing by their boss for being late and looking like such shit. So, I dunno, is schadenfreude a design style? Urban-Neoclassical then. Haha, I’ve no idea.
You seem inclined to shop for vintage furniture, is there any reason why? Or is it just a preference?
I’m attracted to things with character, I guess. I think everybody is. Something with some history to it, y’know? I used to get a lot of furniture from the trash. That swivel chair is one of my favorite trash picks. I found two broken ones outside a bar on 46th street years ago, and after a long time of hoarding two broken chairs, I abandoned my intent to fix them both and just sort of made one out of the working parts of both.
Do you have a favorite Furnish Green piece?
Probably the corner bookcase that we use as a bar. I think, deep down, it always wanted to be a bar. I’m happy to facilitate that. Or maybe the spittoon! I can’t wait to put a big cactus in that thing.
How did you decide on your wall colors?
I thought a dark, rich blue would bring out the fireplace. Also, the apartment is pretty big and the walls are high so I knew it could take a dark color. Well, that, and my occupational disdain for the morning sun.
What’s the story behind the big canvas with the holes?
That is the work of a mischievous little Cocker Spaniel I once had, named Winston. I had acquired the frame from a bar that I was working at downtown, and bought the canvas to wrap around it. I had also taken a photograph from the hudson river of the water towers on the tops of the buildings of the UWS, it was during one of those late, low autumn sunsets that makes the brownstones glow red. My plan was to somehow superimpose this photo onto the bottom of the canvas, and this artist friend of mine was going to paint a big sky above it. It was going to be a sort of landscape in a portrait format. Anyway, I had the canvas rolled up and taped, propped up in a corner of my old studio apartment. I got home one day and Winston, who had evidently been gnawing on the same spot for a while, greeted me with a wagging tail and no apparent remorse or recollection of the incident. Bastard. So when I unravelled it, the holes appeared in this cool, ascending line. I kept it because I think it’s awesome! And it reminds me of a good dog. I taped a small scrap of red paper to the back of one of the holes to give it some of myself, but it’s Winston’s piece.
Where did you get the fireplace grilled cheese makers? And what’s your favorite grilled cheese combo?
Those things are amazing. You get a good fire going, heat up these cast iron beauties, butter them like you’ve only got a week to live and then basically put a sandwich in them, clasp them shut and shove them back into the coals. We’ve had some good combinations lately, but I think the notion of a gourmet grilled cheese is somehow amoral. Like putting clothes on a cat. People should stop doing that. Keep the fig jam and chevre D’or in the fridge. Give me white bread, a slice of cheddar and a slice of white american, cook it, then put me to bed.
Is there anything (furniture or home decor) you’re really looking to add to your apartment?
We do need a better storage solution for our records. I was thinking about trying to find some reclaimed wood and building something. I have a few bev-naps with some crude sketches…
Do you have any general comments about your experience with Furnish Green?
I have only great things to say about the place. A patchwork of treasures and novelties, nestled among some really beautiful pieces of genuinely livable furniture. My only criticism is that I wasn’t able to find it sooner.
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So there you have it! This unique space exhibits the charm that exists in Midtown amid the overwhelming amount of industry and tourism. Adam has managed to create a humble home that really makes you want to just close the blinds and get cozy in front of a fire (grilled cheese not optional).
We hope you’ve enjoyed this installment of our Dwellings series! Stay tuned for future posts, and email us at furnishgreen@gmail.com for a chance to have your space featured!
We recently found an issue of Better Homes & Gardens from 1963, and it has some amazing content! The photos are quintessentially 1960s and the issue has plenty of helpful tips to instruct the 1963 furniture buyer.
We wanted to share some of the wealth of information that maintains relevance today for the modern furniture enthusiast.
An excerpt from “The Beauty of Fine Woods” section:
