Timelessness of Traditional U.S. Furniture
The nation’s attic--The Smithsonian Institution--and antiques stores and museums around the world inspired many of the designs at the fall furniture market in High Point, N.C.
At a difficult time for the furniture industry, when business is spotty and several of the country’s top department stores are on the sale block, manufacturers chose to emphasize traditional pieces that bear a well-known designer’s name or recall another era.
The contemporary styles in wood are warm rather than stark, often embellished with inlays or a painted surface. In place of shiny chrome, softer bronze and pewter finishes characterize metal pieces. Rather than glass, natural and faux unpolished stone materials are used.
Sofas and chairs are clearly made for lounging. Both contemporary and traditional upholstered pieces are overstuffed and oversized with sausage-like arms, and they are slathered with deep cushions and extra throw pillows.
The American love affair with a romanticized representation of our past continues unabated. New American country pieces that borrow from the past but don’t reproduce it were among the most popular at the market.
Copies of styles from the last three centuries of English and American design are a close second. French themes and neoclassical styles such as Biedermeier are minor themes.
Indicative of the pragmatic nature of design today, two of the major new furniture groups combine several English periods (Century and Drexel.) Another is “contemporary with many references to the past” in designer Charles Pfister’s words (Baker). The Lexington group “combines French, English and Italian influences in every piece,” according to designer Lynn Hollyn.
Henredon copied about 35 antiques from the plantations for its licensed Historic Natchez (Miss.) Foundation Collection. This group, like Lynn Hollyn’s, includes a variety of coordinating fabrics and accessories.
The new furniture is, above all, designed to go with what most people already own. Manufacturers have finally learned that the majority of consumers buy furniture a piece at a time. So there’s less stress on large “suites” meant to furnish an entire room.
A new cedar chest by Lane is a good example of this trend. The chest, decorated with a silk-screen version of a mid-19th-Century primitive painting, is part of the 200-piece America Collection licensed by the Museum of American Folk Art. Yet it is interesting enough to stand on its own.
Another example is the Turkish chair introduced by Century. The opulently upholstered overstuffed chair, a close copy of the original owned by the Smithsonian, looks as if it came from a banker’s parlor. It’s also an example of the trend toward reproducing 19th-Century rather than 18th-Century antiques.
Those not up to buying even one new piece can update a room with accents in faux leopard skin. Mark Hampton selected leopard for an entire room display of his collection for Hickory Chair Co. to which several new pieces were added. But the fabric showed up as an accent in pillows or chair covers in virtually every stylish showroom from Drexel to Thayer Coggin. An oversize, fully upholstered ottoman was another common accent piece.
Upholstery fabrics moved in two main color directions: Jewel-like emerald, brilliant blue, red and eggplant, and clear bright florals in sunny yellow and blue or other flower-like colors used with white.