About Us

How we began

Contemporary Craftsman was inspired by our own furniture shopping experience. We had waited years to buy our ‘forever home’ and wanted ‘forever furniture’ that would last the decades we planned to live there. In addition to longevity, it was also important to us that our furniture was safe, American made, and sustainably crafted.

That narrowed things down fast. Most of what we found in showrooms was particle board wearing a thin coat of veneer — furniture designed to look right for a few years and then quietly fall apart. We’d owned that furniture before. We weren’t interested in owning it again.

Amish furniture fit the bill. It is always made from 100% solid wood — no MDF, no veneers, no particle board — so it’s safer and more family friendly than furniture built from artificial wood substitutes. Plus, it’s handcrafted in the Midwest from locally sourced materials and sustainably harvested hardwoods, ensuring a smaller carbon footprint than furniture shipped overseas. Oak, Brown Maple, Cherry, Hickory, Elm, Quarter Sawn White Oak, Walnut — all of it grown, milled, and worked within a few hundred miles of the shop that builds your piece.

We ordered our furniture through family connections in the Midwest during a visit there, customizing everything to match our new home in New Jersey. Sizes to fit our rooms. Woods and stains to match what we already had. Nothing we bought was a compromise, which was a new experience for us.

Our furniture intrigued many of the friends and family who visited. Most weren’t familiar with the Amish community’s furniture expertise and didn’t know it was possible to customize your own furniture. Many thought the Amish only built ‘old fashioned’ pieces and were surprised by how contemporary all our furniture was — clean lines, splayed legs, beveled edges, the kind of pieces you’d expect to find in a design magazine rather than a country store. Some even asked where they could buy something similar, but we didn’t know where to direct them, as there wasn’t much Amish furniture available locally.

That interest sparked an idea — what if we could bring Amish furniture to people outside of the Midwest? We partnered with our family in Michigan and started building connections with Amish craftsmen in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, and soon Contemporary Craftsman was born.

The timing wasn’t an accident. We started this during Covid, when the ground felt like it was moving under everyone and we wanted a little more security than one household income could offer. What we had was a good idea and almost nothing else. We knew nothing about ecommerce — not how to build a store, not how to photograph a table, not how to explain a hand-rubbed finish to somebody a thousand miles away. It turned out to be far harder than we expected, and we learned most of it the slow way.

What we did have was a clear mission, and it hasn’t changed since: make quality furniture more accessible. Solid wood, built by hand in America, available to someone in New Jersey or Texas or Oregon who doesn’t happen to have family in the Midwest to order through. That’s still the whole job.

Creating our brand

We briefly considered opening a brick-and-mortar store, but quickly realized that a virtual store would be the best way to make Amish furniture accessible to everyone and allow our customers the ease of shopping at their own pace from the comfort of home. Plus, with Amish furniture — which is custom built in the exact size, wood, and stain each customer wants — it is difficult to see exactly what you are buying in person anyway, even at furniture dealers that have Amish pieces in stock. The floor model is almost never the piece you’re going to own.

However, we recognized that shopping for furniture online might make some people nervous. So, we did everything possible to make that process easier. Our website includes an online visualization tool, which allows customers to preview how each stain color will look on each piece of furniture — and with more than fifty stains to choose from, that’s a lot of previewing. We offer wood and upholstery samples that customers can have shipped to their homes so they can see their selections in person, in their own light, before they buy. Grain and color read differently at a kitchen table than they do on a screen. We’d rather you take your time.

Meeting the crafters

Skipping the showroom didn’t mean skipping the handshake. Every spring we travel out to the Midwest for the two shows where this whole industry gathers — the Ohio Furniture Market at the Mt. Hope Event Center in Millersburg, in the heart of Holmes County, and the NIWA Furniture Expo at the Michiana Event Center in Shipshewana, Indiana. Between them, a few hundred Amish shops fill acres of floor space with everything they’ve built that year.

We walk those floors for days. We open drawers, run our hands along the joinery, look underneath tables at how the bases are put together, and ask a lot of questions about how a particular finish was achieved. It’s the best furniture education we’ve ever gotten, and it’s the reason we can tell you why one shop’s dovetails are worth the wait.

But the part we look forward to most isn’t the furniture. It’s the people. These are family shops — a father who started at his own father’s bench, sons working alongside him, wives running the finish room or the front of the booth, kids handing out cards and helping load samples. We’ve watched families grow up across these visits. We meet the crafters, we meet their families, we ask about the shop and the season and the hardwood supply, and we catch up the way you do with anyone you’ve known for years. We’re on a first-name basis with many of them now, and we’d like to think they look forward to seeing us too.

Those relationships are quietly the most valuable thing we own. When a customer writes in asking for a piece a half-inch shorter, or a variation nobody sells, or a bookcase in Quarter Sawn White Oak with a custom stain, we’re not searching a catalog — we’re thinking about which of our partners does that particular thing best, and then calling him. We have dozens of Amish partners, and after enough years of shows we know their strengths well enough to match a request to the right bench. It also means that when we tell you your piece is built by hand, in solid hardwood, by an American craftsman who takes his name seriously, we’re not repeating a marketing line. We’ve stood in front of him and shaken his hand.

One year we wanted to send our customers something at the holidays, and rather than order a few hundred of anything, we called one of our best crafters and asked if he’d make them for us. Heirloom cutting boards — solid hardwood, the same stock that goes into our tables, built at the same bench by the same hands.

He said yes, and then he brought his daughter in to help so she could learn the craft. She worked alongside him on them and did the oiling herself, board by board, rubbing each one down before it was boxed. We think about that a lot. A few hundred cutting boards is not a glamorous job, and a family shop took it on the way they take on everything — carefully, together, without cutting a corner where nobody would have noticed. Those boards went out to customers all over the country, and we still hear about them. People use them every day, and that was the whole idea.

Personal approach

We pride ourselves on being a family-owned small business and we take a personal approach with all our customers. We expect to and enjoy talking to each one of our customers directly. If you aren’t sure what will work best for you, we offer free design consultations. If you don’t see something you like or you would like a variation that we don’t offer on the website, please reach out — with dozens of Amish partners, we can typically find one who can build you exactly what you’re looking for. Any piece can be made in any wood, and any wood can be stained in any color. Or contact us if you have any questions about the furniture, the customization process, the timeline, or anything else.

If you order something online, we will reach out personally and make sure every detail of your order is correct and answer any questions you may have. And once your order is placed we will provide updates as your piece is built and then shipped. Amish furniture does take time — approximately 8–14 weeks from purchase to delivery — because your piece isn’t sitting in a warehouse. The boards get selected after you order. Nobody is rushing it, and we wouldn’t want them to. We’ll make sure you know exactly when it’s arriving, and it comes to you by white glove delivery — carried into the room where it belongs, unwrapped, and set in place.

Then it’s yours, backed by a lifetime warranty, for as long as you want it.

For us, this business is truly a passion. We own Amish furniture, we support American products, and our only goal is to give people more options than just buying mass produced furniture made overseas. Connecting with Amish craftsmen and understanding the time and effort that goes into everything they make has truly been an enlightening journey for us. We’ve learned so much about the importance of owning safer, sustainable, locally made furniture — and about the simple math of it, that one solid wood table you keep for forty years is better for your home and for the world than five that end up at the curb.

We hope that you will consider joining us on this journey. Call us, text us, or send an email. We’d love to hear what you’re looking for.

Humbly yours,

Chris and Laura Panjwani