Last month in our online newsletter, The Artful Home^®, I wrote about the power and pull of handmade furniture. Bonnie Brave, a reader from O’Fallon, IL, responded with some inspirational words of her own. With her permission, I’m reprinting them here for you to enjoy:

“I wholeheartedly agree about furniture being like poetry–the feel of the wood, the look of the grain, even the smell of a piece evokes a memory.

“I have inherited a piece of furniture from my grandparents that I truly cherish. It is approximately 175 years old and has remarkably withstood the test of time. It is a beautiful armoire that has been passed down in my family and that I painstakingly took two full days to refinish to reveal its natural original beauty.

“Every time I walk by this piece it speaks to me of childhood memories of all of the treasures that it once held as it sat upstairs in my grandparents’ home…All I have to do is open a drawer and I am taken back to their home by the scent that triggers my brain to remember those days. It is truly a quality piece of artfully carved furniture that I am proud to own and use each day.”