Toby Newell
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TheRoost said:What are your thoughts on Oak furnitureland Toby? same sort of clever marketing aimed at the masses and oak from the far east?
My thoughts? You have read them already. I cringe when the guy on the advert knocks on the furniture. I hear another oak tree falling! And 'clever' is an insult to the word clever, it's just marketing, unfortunately they don't need to try very hard. Some people seem to think that because something is 'solid oak' that somehow makes it a quality item without actually looking at how awful it looks or is made. It's a bit like chicken breasts. Remember in the 1970's chicken breasts! What luxury! Who could afford just the breast!? My family could not. Now look at them, you can get a lovely juicy battery farmed one for 50p! Hooray! Chicken breasts for all! It's a chicken breast, it must be good quality. Making previously high quality and highly regarded items, food, goods and services more widely available by reducing the overall median standard to 'crap'. This is progress? I always thought the arrow of human progress should be defined, in general as having a positive slope.
Capitalism isn't broken. People are. Stock markets were not originally designed to sell short, pillage viable businesses, repress workers and funnel wealth to those who least need it, they were designed, to facilitate commerce and innovation.
Hardwood furniture should be made from high quality, slow grown timber, it should well designed, well made and built to last a hundred years or more, it should be expensive and not mass produced. Instead of discarding it at a tip after 15 years or whenever one is bored with it, it should be passed on to family, friends or sold for decent sums to fund the purchase of new high quality timber.
I suppose the same could be said of any man made product. Cleaning out yoghurt pots and building wind turbines will not save humanity, producing less of higher quality will, only with wood products the connection is more evocative and immediate.
Besides the quality of the timber is awful, it looks discoloured, mismatched with lots of sapwood and hardly any quarter grain. Same goes with the majority of cheap oak flooring, I cannot see much difference between that and laminate. Personally I would much prefer a painted item unless of high quality timber, a painted item made from a sustainable wood source made to a minimum standard, that would last.
And yes, the generations type flooring suits certain types, the rich with more money than taste comes to mind.