Roma Furniture

Roma bench in bloom

We were fortunate to have a Roma (Gypsy) community living near us who manufactured and marketed cedar garden furniture. The young men sold throughout the area from brightly colored flatbed trucks, while the older generation constucted the benches and back in the camp. The furniture fits us just right, with very comfortable angles. I used the measurements as a guide for our rhododendron bench and chair. This piece is thirty years old.

The rhododendron in bloom is Antoon van Welie.

(Roma community below)

In 1997, Doreen and I had a chance to visit an old Roma village on the border of Hungary and Serbia. As we talked with students studying advanced mathematics and French in a primitive outdoor school, we thought about the traditional tight-knit Roma community in Washington who made our benches, and the young Hungarian Roma who would soon enter a university in the outside world.