Picnic Furniture provides benches to many venues around the world. You will find our benches in schools, parks, residential communities, and restaurants. Benches are a part of our everyday lives and we recognize the value of a well placed bench! Our owner John Gravlee has catalogued some of the more unique benches he has seen while traveling the globe. Please enjoy our article below and feel free to browse our wide selection of commercial outdoor benches.
Traveling provides many many photo opportunities for the amateur photographer that sells benches for a living. The benches in these pictures can be found from New Smyrna Beach Florida to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. So let’s explore benches together...
Contemplation
Amsterdam is a fabulous place to visit. Our trip was filled with interesting and beautiful moments. Let’s explore the bench in Amsterdam first. Canals and bicycles are a way of life in this city giving it a presence that is not duplicated anywhere; even Venice. Here is an artistic bench that provides you with charming bronze companion. She doesn’t say much and is not very warm on a drizzly winter day. So if you are all bundles up and enjoy solitude; she’s your girl!
I don’t know who the author of the quote on the back of this bench is here on one of the canals. However, I searched out the translation on the back of this bench and found it means “To serve God is to serve people, to serve people is serving God”. It is kind of catchy and a nice thought. However, I am not sure I would make this bench just to make that statement unless this bench is memorializing someone; perhaps a Dutch writer. Benches are often used as a memorial as most benches are permanent structures to loosen your load. We will name this bench contemplation bench! Sit on it and think about it for a while.
“Out On A Limb Bench”
Moving to the other side of the world is natural bench made from the arm of a live oak in a wonderful park named “Deleon Springs” near Deland, Florida. Wow what tree bench; borrowed from “Tree House”. We will name this out on a limb bench! Live Oaks are indigenous to this part of the world and in some case are over two hundred years old. Wikipedia says this about the Live Oak, “Southern live oak is cultivated for shade and as an ornamental. Care is relatively easy, as it requires very little watering while it is young. After it is four to five feet tall, watering can be forgotten, and no more care is required. It is long-lived; trees in excess of 500 years were once common.” Well, I would say this is one of the oldie but goodies and a favorite for this beautiful park in Florida.
Once again, Wikipedia gives us a great description of Deleon Springs. “The park covers 611 acres (2.4 km²) of Volusia County, built around a natural sulfur spring, flowing at a rate of about 20 million US gallons (76,000 m3) a day, that remains 72 degrees Fahrenheit year-round and reaches a depth of 30 feet (9.1 m) at the spring boil. This is one fabulous park to visit. People swim in the lake created by the spring for a refreshing dip. When you are done swimming, the “make your own pancakes” restaurant is always fun and delicious. While you are visiting go ahead and go out on a limb!
Bench Slippin’ into the Future
Traveling to New Orleans gives one a slice of time that is somewhat fluid. The architecture in the French Quarter might make you think it is Europe instead of the central southernmost United States. Oh the food, music and people are like nowhere else on earth! Festivals are a way of life every day. They are either having a festival or getting ready for another one. Mardi Gras is perhaps the most famous even though it did not start in New Orleans. On my birthday March 2 in 1699, French-Canadian explorer Jean Baptiste Le Moyne Sieur de Bienville arrived at a plot of ground 60 miles directly south of New Orleans, and named it "Pointe du Mardi Gras". Mobile Alabama was the site of the first Mardi Gras. In 1703, the tiny settlement of Fort Louis de la Mobile celebrated America's very first Mardi Gras eventually moving to New Orleans and celebrated in the 1730’s. When you go to New Orleans today, the whole town is one constant carnival of Festivals celebrating food, music, art, antiques and bohemian life styles. You can tell that no clock is necessary as the town operates 24 hours 7 days a week. Each morning very early like 7 AM the street cleaners are out cleaning the last night’s party off the sidewalks making way for the party du jour. As I looked at this bench I remembered the song lyrics from Steve Miller Band; “Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’ into the future”. I am calling it the “Bench slippin’ into the future”. Traveling south we find ourselves in a shopping mall in Bogota Colombia with the bench I will call the “Wing bench”. Someone has fashioned wood into what appears to be airplane wings. It is an interesting design as the curve of the winged seat and back give a very comfortable ergonomic rest from shopping.
Wing Bench
Traveling south we find ourselves in a shopping mall in Bogota Colombia with the bench I will call the “Wing bench”. Someone has fashioned wood into what appears to be airplane wings. It is an interesting design as the curve of the winged seat and back give a very comfortable ergonomic rest from shopping. Bogota is a city that rivals New York City in population with approximately 8 million people. That’s twice the size of Los Angeles! Over the past 10 years, I have watched the city move from human and donkey-drawn carts on the street interspersed with 125 Suzuki’s whining like bee’s through traffic, to BMW’s, Mercedes, Audi’s and new Chevy’s clogging the streets. They alternate license numbers each day to attempt to reduce the traffic. The more affluent Colombians have two cars just to get around this limitation. In the time I have been traveling to Bogota I have looked at the parks and street benches to evaluate the market to sell in Colombia.
Ten years ago concrete formed into a block was a typical park bench. Today the country is beginning to make and use benches and outdoor furniture that is more contemporary instyle common in Europe and other parts of the world. The “Wing Bench” shows the modernization going on in Colombia. Perhaps there will be a day that Furniture Leisure, Inc. finds Colombia a market to play in.
Bench Swimming with the Sharks!
Rushing back to Florida; our home and business base in the world, we find ourselves in New Smyrna Beach. This beach town is our most favorite beach in the US. located in north central Florida on the Atlantic, it does not have the Caribbean clear and tranquil waters. However, the beach is fabulous with low tide in the summer often 100 yards of flat gently sloped beach with warm temporary tidal pools of water carved in the sand. People lounge in these pools and children safely play in the powdery white sand. Yes it is known for its sharks and occasional bites but like many unexplained events in life it is also one of the most popular surfing towns on the east coast hosting surfing contests drawing world class surfers. So we will call this bench “Bench swimming with the Sharks”. Just off the beach, New Smyrna Beach provides these decorated benches with the City Seal. This park has covered picnic tables and many benches to enjoy the constant movement of water the ocean provides like a 24/7 water park from nature.
Just next door is the “Breakers” Restaurant that has some of the best burgers in town and a long counter to just enjoy the view of all the beach fun going on. Way back in the early 2000’s Hurricane Charlie to a swing at this beach town and I saw what the breakers could do. The huge commercial freezer and refrigerators outside in the corner of the parking lot. The morning after Charlie the whole unit crashed down to the surf as the breakers had washed the sand from under the parking lot. What a mess to clean up and return from. Our beautiful beach was washed out to sea and the concrete ramp to the beach was hanging in the breeze! “Bench swimming with the sharks” still stands as it is over 1000 pounds of wind, salt and water resistant concrete. Not hurricane proof but it will take a Cat 3 to 4 to send it out to sea!
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