Kids, your humble host is a bit of a simpleton. What other explanation could there be for me to fundamentally misunderstand what Red Tree is all about? While long a fan of the East Market shop I never knew that they actually make the furniture they sell. Or have made, or whatever. The point is if you see a dresser you like but think you’d like better in a different finish ok! Just browse through the catalog the nice folks at Red Tree have and you’ll see all the finish and other options for a given piece of furniture. I thought that when you browsed Red Tree what you see is what you get because they just sold stuff they “found” wherever. So, so wrong. Seriously, go in ask for a catalogue and see just how many options you’ve got for very cool furniture. Now I won’t lie to you and say the furniture is cheap but it’s reasonably priced I think for the quality of work and aesthetic qualities of the stuff you’re getting.

If you do custom order a piece of furniture it will take a while to get since it’s coming from oh I don’t know, the other side of the world, but they’ll loan you a version of the piece they have in stock until yours gets here. Isn’t that nice?

When I visited Red Tree a very nice employee educated me on all their furniture offerings and gave me some backstory on the store and the owner including the fact there are several other Red Tree locations. Don’t worry, Louisville is the original and dare I say most loved. He also told me that Red Tree has been around since the early 2000s. Thinking back there wasn’t much retail business going on down on East Market during that time frame so it’s really cool that the owner took a risk and started his business there. Now that East Market is growing up so much and has so many new businesses Red Tree is kind of like the cool older brother who has seen way more and has good advice for the younger siblings.

Furniture isn’t all they have at Red Tree. It’s a huge store that takes up two buildings on East Main so they’ve got a lot of stuff. They have local art, home decor including cool lamps, clocks, paper weights, nicknacks, etc., holiday decorations, ritual objects (I’ll explain that in a moment) and on and on and on.

One of the things I’ve always dug about Red Tree is that they have a small selection of cool Judaica. Finding Judaica in this city isn’t easy unless you’re shopping at my synagogue’s gift shop. So I really like that you can by a “Chai Maintenance” bib or a beautiful kiddish cup at a cool shop on East Market. When I was there a couple weeks ago though I noticed that they didn’t just have the standard tchotkes but they also had some Passover stuff including this really nice Seder plate:

If they step up and start carrying some cool mezuzahs, Shabbat candlesticks and Tzedakah boxes they’ll be giving local synagogue gift shop’s a run for their money. I mean where else can you buy a mezuzah and new dress for your bedroom in one stop?

Red Tree
701 East Market
Louisville, KY