Also called "selling in the white," this practice saved money on freight. Sometimes Drexel shipped furniture to these agents "kd" (knocked down, or in parts), so that it could be assembled elsewhere.
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The Drexel plant burned down in late 1906 but was rebuilt with an insurance payment of $25,000.Ī pioneer in the furniture industry later conceded that "North Carolina factories in those days were accused of selling lumber and not furniture." During Drexel's earliest period its workers and managers had to learn the trade by trial and error, and the company had to entrust most of its sales to outside agents who designed and priced, in addition to selling, the furniture. Production began with about 50 workers making oak dressers, washstands, and chiffonniers. The finished building, erected on the site of Huffman's sawmill, was accompanied by a second facility for the finishing and shipping department. Burke County, in which Drexel is located, was still about one-third untouched forest in 1903 and had not a single mile of decent road. Starting operations on a shoestring budget was typical of this era for the furniture industry of the Piedmont region, which relied on ample supplies of hardwood, water power potential, and low-cost and plentiful labor. Their initial investment of $14,000 went towards erecting a factory and installing furniture-making machinery within. Both enterprises were operated by Samuel Huffman, who with five Morganton businessmen founded the company.
At the time this community consisted of little more than a railroad siding built to accommodate a sawmill and flour mill. was founded in 1903 in Drexel, about five miles east of Morganton, North Carolina. A subsidiary since 1986 of Masco Corp., the world's largest furniture manufacturer, Drexel Heritage is also a retailer of home furnishing accessories. has been producing furniture for almost a century. SICs: 2511 Wood Household Furniture 2512 Upholstered Wood Household Furniture 2521 Wood Office Furniture 2522 Office Furniture, Except Wood 5023 Home Furnishingsīased in the foothills of North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, Drexel Heritage Furnishings Inc. There were Young Turks such as Paul McCobb - who designed holistic groups of sleek, blonde-wood furniture - and Milo Baughman, who espoused a West Coast aesthetic in lushly upholstered chairs and sofas with angular steel frames.Īs the collection of vintage mid-century modern American furniture on 1stDibs demonstrates, this period saw one of the most delightful and dramatic flowerings of creativity in design history.Incorporated: 1903 as Drexel Furniture Co. Robsjohn-Gibbings switched gears, creating items such as the tiered, biomorphic Mesa table. Materials were re-purposed: the Danish-born designer Jens Risom created a line of chairs that used surplus parachute straps for webbed seats and backrests.Īs the demand for casual, uncluttered furnishings grew, more mid-century designers caught the spirit.Ĭlassically-oriented creators such as Edward Wormley, house designer for Dunbar Inc., offered such pieces as the sinuous Listen to Me chaise the British expatriate T.H. Harry Bertoia and Isamu Noguchi devised chairs and tables built of wire mesh and wire struts. George Nelson and his design team created Bubble lamp shades using a new translucent polymer skin. Charles and Ray Eames and Eero Saarinen, who had experimented extensively with molded plywood, eagerly embraced fiberglass for, respectively, pieces such as the La Chaise and the Womb chair. Materials developed for wartime use became available for domestic goods and were incorporated into mid-century modern furniture designs. New building techniques, such as “post-and-beam” construction, allowed the International-style schemes to be realized on a small scale, in open-plan houses with long walls of glass. The lean, functionalist “International Style” architecture of Le Corbusier and Bauhaus eminences such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius had been promoted in the United States during the ’30s by Philip Johnson and others. Postwar American architects and designers were animated by new ideas and new technology. The style, which emerged primarily in the years following World War II, is characterized by pieces that were conceived and made in an energetic, optimistic spirit by creators who believed that good design was an essential part of good living.
Organically shaped, clean-lined and elegantly simple are three terms that well describe mid-century modern American furniture.