It’s just furniture you say...
Why would anyone spend tens of thousands of dollars on a single piece of furniture? We believe it is for the same reason Tom, a cabinet maker, spends nearly 14 hours fitting each individual drawer to glide smoothly and flawlessly every time the customer uses it, and the same reason Joe, a hand sander, spends 13 hours meticulously sanding every inch of this case with three different grades of sandpaper. When Betty paints the Chinese decoration on by hand, she may add a few more lotus flowers and more foliage to the trees simply because it's a bright sunny day out her window and, well, because she wants to. It's because to them it's not just furniture, nor is it to our customers.
To our customers and to our artisans each unique piece that moves through this old factory is a treasure. When the nearly 20 individuals in the finish department hand apply stains and fillers and glazes, when they sand between each process and each lacquer coat, they know that in, say, 30 or 40 years when the owner's great grandchild decides to refinish this piece, it will live anew for another lifetime or two or three. Those priviledged descendents will discover that beneath the hand-decorated ebony finish and gold leaf lies a spectacular circassian walnut veneer, as beautiful and lively as the day it was first incarnated by today's talented craftsmen.
No piece of Karges furniture is like another, and no piece goes without all of this attention to detail. Our customer knows this and values this. In Evansville, Indiana in the old building that we've occupied for 120 years, 70 talented Americans spend every day working on treasures like these. Why? Because like our customers we know it's not just furniture. It's living art.
