David Francis Furniture :: Blog

I adore designing case pieces and love the versatility of chests…they can be used in virtually every room.

- Today, you may be buying a chest to store your clothing; but tomorrow, this same piece may be parked in the dining room and used as a buffet.
- Chests are great for hallways - place one near the front door to be used as a catch-all for your keys or position one down a long corridor to showcase a fabulous piece of art.
- Arrange a chest against an odd-sized wall or to use it to add life to a desolate corner.

Buy high-quality with clean lines…if/when your décor changes a few years down the road, you can change the finish and/or hardware for a fresh, new look. My advice to you: if you buy one piece of furniture this year, make it a chest!

One thing we’re known for is the ability to create custom finish colors for our furniture. This is a big selling point, as the customer never has to settle with “almost perfect.”

Usually, we are tasked with matching colors offered by other furniture manufacturers – tones of browns, crackles, antiquing, etc.

One of the most interesting requests ever came from a designer who shipped us a ceramic pomegranate and asked us to formulate a painted finish to match it! Our finishing department successfully created the perfect, fruity finish, to the delight of our customer.

This task proved that inspiration can come from anywhere. Have you ever had any “unconventional” inspirations? 

I have been saying for the past several years that the furniture industry has many parallels to the fashion industry.  Each new catalog has all of the pomp and circumstance of a fashion show.  It is our equivalent to a debut on the Paris runway. All my work that has been done over the past 12 to 18 months culminates with the unveiling of our new fashions for the upcoming year.  Within the first 90 days of its introduction, the designs will be deemed either “in” or “out.”  Plans are already being made to add and to change several of the existing fashions with new designs that are in the catalog that was just published.  

Since our company is based exclusively on high quality, high-end luxury products, we have one objective when we introduce a new furniture fashion - it must be different.  The fashion industry is always moving forward.  You cannot exist in the past and expect to succeed.  Unless we can create a new “form” with a new twist using an old design, it has already been done.   There are so many “like” designs I see no reason to bring out just “another” chair or chest of drawers. It has to have a reason to exist!

I have already completed the fashion lineup for both 2009 and 2010.   As with any designer, fashion or furniture, I am impatient.  The designs for 2009 have not even been introduced and I cannot wait for the 2010 collections to become reality.  My finest designs are yet to come…I just wish they would get here a little faster!