What You Should Know About Our Kingsbridge Tufted Sofa

The Kensington Tufted Sofa is a classic Chesterfield design made popular by several Catalog Companies. Compare our Kingsbridge Leather Sofa to the Restoration Hardware’s Kensington Leather Sofa,  the Arhaus Wessex Leather Sofa, Pottery Barn’s Leather Chesterfield and other tufted leather sofas. Our version of this sofa, the Kingsbridge is handcrafted in a state of the art manufacturing facility in Taylorsville, North Carolina. It is manufactured by Jonathan Wesley Furniture. The owner of our factory Tim Shook and his uncle, Norm Shook founded a company in the early 70’s called Taylor King Furniture, considered to be one of the premier upholstery manufacturers in the industry. They later sold Taylor King to Hancock and Moore. After the sale Tim continued on as the plant Manger for Taylor King , eventually leaving and reopening as Jonathan Wesley Furniture. Coincidentally Tim’s brother replaced Tim as the plant manger for Taylor King. Several of Tim’s upholsterers joined him at Jonathan Wesley. As you can see from this little bit of history, our factory owner has been making high quality upholstered furniture for 43 years.

Dear Friends,

We have been fortunate enough to receive some wonderful testimonials over the years from customers who are close to raving fans.

Dear Casco Bay Friends…delivery yesterday completed!! What a sofa! We are delighted…wonderful work!! Bristol Sofa, 89″W x 39″D x 29″H, with Tufted Seat and Small Antique Brass Nails. Cheers…Chuck (chuck.frost46@gmail.com)

Updated – If you are in the middle of shopping for leather furniture you may have run across derogatory comments about Casco Bay on myfurnitureforum.com.

It turns out that the forum, in addition to being educational, is a gateway to sell leather furniture in direct competition to Casco Bay. The primary leather and fabric upholstery brands sold on myfurnitureforum.com are Taylor King and Hancock and Moore as well as Bradington Young and Century.

At Casco Bay Furniture, we are often asked about the history of the Chesterfield sofa. Here is a bit of that history.

The word “Chesterfield” is a term used today by many in North American and particularly in Canada to describe what most of us commonly refer to as a sofa. But the term has much older origins. It is generally thought that the Fourth Earl of Chesterfield, Lord Philip Stanford, who lived from 1694 to 1773 and died at the age of 79, commissioned his furniture maker to build a leather sofa that would not wrinkle the clothes of a gentlemen sitting upright, but in comfort.

We have all admired a beautiful piece of furniture, a sofa, a dining room table, but have you ever wondered how it goes from concept to reality? Surely it must be a complex process.

Think about it. Take a sofa, for example. Not only does it have to look good, it has to sit good for the vast amount of people—with all of their different sizes, heights and shapes—who are considering purchasing it,

A quality sofa is also expected to last along time, decades even. It has to take the abuse of kids, grandchildren, teenagers, cats, dogs and other assorted creatures. I decided to contact our staff designer, D Ross of  Hickory, North Carolina to learn more about how this is accomplished.

People often tell me that they are confused by the different types of leathers. Some companies use “levels,” others “grade”. What does this really mean? Casco Bay Furniture Review decided to investigate the topic.

Basically there are 5 types of leather used in upholstered furniture. Here are my thoughts on the pros and cons of each.