The range of vintage Drexel furniture for sale on 1stDibs includes end tables designed by Edward Wormley, walnut side tables designed by Kipp Stewart and lots more. In 2014, the last Drexel Heritage plant, in Morganton, North Carolina, reportedly closed its doors. Plywood-Champion Papers bought Drexel Enterprises in 1968, and it became Drexel Heritage Furnishings. In the following decades, contracts with government agencies, hotels, schools and hospitals brought its high-quality furniture to a global audience. Its acquisition of Southern Desk Company in 1960 bolstered its production of institutional furniture for dormitories, classrooms, churches and laboratories.
#Drexel heritage furniture bedroom series
By 1957, the company that had started with a factory of 50 workers had 2,300 employees and was selling its furniture nationwide.ĭrexel underwent a series of name changes in its long history. With the manufacturer’s success - spurred by its embrace of advertising in home and garden magazines - it opened more factories in both North and South Carolina. It was then that the company began to expand, with several acquisitions of competitors in the 1950s, including Table Rock Furniture, the Heritage Furniture Co. It was managed by one of the original partners - Samuel Huffman - until 1935, at which time his son Robert O. In the 1970s, Drexel introduced high-end furniture in a Mediterranean style.ĭrexel changed hands and visions throughout the years. In the postwar era, Drexel embraced the clean lines of mid-century modernism with the Declaration collection designed by Stewart MacDougall and Kipp Stewart that featured elegant credenzas and more made in walnut and the Profile and Projection collections designed with sculptural shapes by John Van Koert. Always ready to adapt to new customer demands, during World War II, Drexel built a sturdy desk designed especially for General Douglas MacArthur. Here's an advertisement from their collection. At that time, it was the most expensive set of furniture being manufactured in the good 'ol USA. So what's all the fuss about this dresser In the sixties, Drexel (before they merged with Heritage and became Drexel Heritage) made the Touraine collection. Others replicated the ornate details of 18th-century chinoiserie or the embellishments of Queen Anne furniture. Before the furniture gods changed their minds. This included making pieces inspired by historic European furniture, like the popular French provincial–style Touraine bedroom and dining group that borrowed its curves from Louis XV-era furniture. This focus on design, which few other furniture companies were committing to at the time, allowed Drexel to respond to a variety of new and traditional tastes. One of Drexel’s early innovations was to employ staff designers, something the company initiated in the 1930s. The first offerings from Drexel Furniture were simple: a bed, washstand and bureau all crafted from native oakwood, sold as a bedroom suite for $14.50. In 1903, in the small town of Drexel in the foothills of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, six partners came together to found a company that would become one of the country’s leading furniture producers. While vintage Drexel Furniture dining tables, dressers and other pieces remain highly desirable for enthusiasts of mid-century modern design, the manufacturer's story actually begins decades before its celebrated postwar-era Declaration line took shape.
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