HIGH POINT — Deanna Wish was happy to take a few minutes in her showroom at the Fall International Home Furnishings Market here in October to talk about her designs with Post photographer Joey Benton and me.

After all, it was an article by The New York Times that gave her Amish Country Collection of furniture, one of four divisions of Wish Designs, international exposure. An editor for the Times had seen an ad for a hickory rocker in the back of a home and garden magazine and featured a double version in the newspaper.

As a result, “we sold 200 of them,” Deanna said, “and it launched our company. So I’m real interested in the press.”

She started the Amish Country Collection 23 years ago as a mail-order company with one offering, the hickory rocker made by the Amish in her native western Pennsylvania. She gradually expanded the line of indoor furniture to include the double rocker, called the “courting seat,” a bishop’s bench, coffee tables, end tables, stools, high chairs, children’s rockers, shelves, magazine racks, mirrors and beds.

All of the pieces are hickory-based with oak, cherry or walnut slabs. Custom-order pieces and finishes are also available, according to Merit Wish, who works with her mother and has her own line of juvenile furniture.

“Oftentimes, when we do something that’s custom ordered,” Merit said, “we’ll do our own rendition of that and place it in our line.”

Deanna was displaying her creations in the Hamilton wing of the semi-annual furnishings market, where all the lighting designs were displayed, when she got the idea to do her own line.

“I just decided I would naturally try to do it in branches,” she said. “Necessity made it so; we were on a lighting floor.”

The idea manifested seven years ago with the introduction of the Hickory Branches line of chandeliers, which she markets as Brancheliers, and lamps.

Though they’re not made by the Amish because they don’t work with electricity, Deanna said they are designed to complement the Amish Country Collection line of furniture and accessories.

The hickory branches are steam-bent on forms so they stay in place. “There’s no pressure against our nails because they’re already formed,” she said.

The Brancheliers, which are UL approved, retail from about $500 to $5,000 and can be found in all styles of homes. “If you get out this issue of Traditional Home magazine,” she said, “there’s a megamillion-dollar mansion featuring our chandelier.”

A Hickory Branches chandelier was also hanging in a log home featured in a recent edition of Log Home magazine. One of the stars of “L.A. Law,” whose house was featured on the Home Decorating Network, also has a Branchelier.

Playboy magazine featured one of the Amish Country Collection beds, giving the company even more publicity.

The furniture and lighting designs have been sold all over the world, according to Deanna. A prince in Saudi Arabia even bought a hickory mirror for his home.

“We have a wide variety of people who like it,” she said. “A lot of people look at it and say, ‘Oh, it’s just a rustic piece,’ but it becomes a piece of art in more sophisticated settings.

“A piece of art can go anywhere. It’s getting to be very natural to find our Amish furniture in normal places, mainstream, I call it.”

Merit Wish said the Amish in their area were only making a few pieces before her mother created the other furniture and accessories in the line. “So she’s really the creator of the Amish look,” she said.

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For more information on the Amish Country Collection or Hickory Branches divisions of Wish Designs, write the company at R.D. #5 Box 271, Sunset Valley, New Castle, PA 16105 or call the company at 724-458-4811.