As any loyal customer of Blue Ridge Furniture can attest to, there's nothing like the durability and beauty of solid-wood furniture made by hand, especially when it's a skill passed down from generation to generation.

And Sidney Burkholder, who started building Blue Ridge's custom-made furnishings in 1994, is inclined to agree.

"We're still making furniture just like we did in the old days," he affirms. "Indoor furniture is our main business, and every piece is solid wood—we use no veneers."

After Burkholder joined the Blue Ridge team and worked his way up to a management role, he seized the opportunity to buy the business in the early 2000s. In those two decades, three of Burkholder's children have become involved in company operations, as his oldest sons Leonard, Lamar and Nathan lend their carpentry craftsmanship to the manufacturing side.

Its physical footprint has expanded, too. A "big expansion" in 2004 led to the creation of a building where the team does all of its finishing and hardware assembly, and an increasingly spacious showroom and retail store about two miles from its manufacturing facility allows customers to examine the fine craftsmanship behind all of Blue Ridge's handmade furnishing up close.

"In 2006, we expanded to an around 3,000-square-foot showroom, and then in 2010, we moved farther east on the same road up into 11,000 square feet," Burkholder explains.

In 2010, Blue Ridge also started selling an array of outdoor furniture, which is also available at its Narvon, Pennsylvania, showroom, though those furnishings are supplied by outside vendors rather than the interior-focused in-house craftsmen. Those pieces come with the same promise of providing long-lasting beauty and comfort, backed by 20-year warranties.

"We thought [outdoor furniture] would be a good supplement to our business and our name, so of course we looked all over for the best quality," says Burkholder. "We have three vendors we currently deal with right now, the top vendors we believe are out there."

But even though Blue Ridge has seen some changes over the years, its commitment to delivering fine wooden furniture has always remained the same, as has its focus on creating one-of-a-kind indoor pieces for buyers from New York City to Baltimore and all around the world. Every item that Blue Ridge makes and sells—which includes tables, gliding rockers, beds, hutches, office furniture and even some bathroom amenities, as well as the raw pieces it finishes—is solid wood. And whether that piece is made from oak, cherry, walnut or maple, it's guaranteed to last for decades, if not generations.

Blue Ridge also offers live-edge tables, which preserve a piece of wood's natural curves, gnarls and character rather than cutting it in straight edges—a trend that Burkholder's son Leonard expressed interest in years before it became one of today's most in-demand pieces.

"The live edge is something my oldest son got into here a couple of years ago, and it's been a slow-growing business that, so far, has done very well for us," Burkholder says before adding with a chuckle that "what we used to think was firewood 20 years ago, people are now thinking of as nice furniture."

No matter what a customer is looking for, though, creating high-quality custom pieces is a process that Blue Ridge has down to a science, inviting client feedback and offering transparency from the very first stage of putting pen to paper.

"People come in with a picture or a drawing, we go over it with them and add details here and there, and then give them a rendered drawing of it and have them approve it before we proceed with the work—and then, of course, there's different finishes you can use, you can match up the stain colors if you want pieces to go together," explains Burkholder. "We work with our customers all the way from start to finish. The advantage we have over other stores is that we are the manufacturer."

With Blue Ridge becoming more and more of a family affair as even Burkholder's youngest son and daughter have taken to tinkering around the shop, he knows the woodworking craftsmanship he learned in his youth and is passing along to his sons will keep the business's reputation as strong and long-lasting as the pieces it makes and sells.

"I enjoy making people happy and delivering the furniture that they say is absolutely gorgeous, is beautiful, it fits their decor," says the Blue Ridge owner. "Hearing 'You're the best!' is exactly what we're looking for."

Blue Ridge Furniture
2014 Main St., Narvon, Pa.
(717) 445-6596
BlueRidgeFurniture.com

Published (and copyrighted) in House & Home, Volume 23, Issue 8 (June 2023).
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