Farmhouse furniture is the sturdy, practical furniture traditionally made for the kitchens, dining rooms and living spaces of rural farmhouses. It is part of the wider tradition of country furniture and was generally made by local carpenters and joiners rather than fashionable urban cabinetmakers.
Typical pieces include long scrubbed-top farmhouse tables, dressers with open plate racks, settles with high backs to keep out draughts, Windsor and ladder-back chairs, benches, food cupboards, dough bins, chests and pantry cupboards. Common timbers include pine, oak, elm, ash and fruitwoods, often left plain, painted or simply waxed. Farmhouse furniture was built for heavy daily use, and its appeal today lies in its honest construction, generous scale and the character that comes from decades of wear, scrubbing and repair. It became especially fashionable from the later twentieth century as part of the country kitchen style. When buying, look for original painted surfaces or good natural colour, sound construction and signs of genuine age rather than artificial distressing.
