In 2004 Drexel Heritage Furniture Industries, Inc., as part of Furniture Brands International, was based in High Point and had 1,300 employees working at several facilities in North Carolina. State Department and the General Services Administration placed Drexel furniture in American embassies and government offices all over the world. Many of the best-known hotels in the world purchased Drexel furniture, and contracts with the U.S. furniture manufacturer.ĭrexel for many years sold home and institutional furniture both domestically and abroad. In 1986 Drexel Heritage became a wholly owned subsidiary of Masco Corporation, which, by buying several other leading North Carolina furniture makers, became by the late 1980s the largest U.S. Champion sold Drexel Heritage to Dominick International Corporation, a private New York brokerage and investment banking firm, in August 1977. As a subsidiary of Champion, the company became Drexel Heritage Furnishings, Inc. Plywood-Champion Papers bought Drexel Enterprises. 1960 Drexel Furniture became Drexel Enterprises, Inc., and the following year it acquired the Southern Desk Company, manufacturer of a broad line of institutional furniture and equipment for laboratories, libraries, classrooms, dormitories, and churches. In time, the company acquired other furniture plants, including the Table Rock Furniture Company in 1951 and the Heritage Furniture Company and Morganton Furniture Company in 1956. 1903 and began making fine furniture in a small factory near Morganton in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. 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.The Drexel Furniture Company was incorporated on 10 Nov. 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 FOR SALE 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. Others replicated the ornate details of 18th-century chinoiserie or the embellishments of Queen Anne furniture. 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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