At furniture mart, it’s back to the future
May 9th, 2006 Category FurnitureThen: Technology ran rampant, with telephones and automobiles changing lifestyles at a dizzying pace.
Now: Technology runs rampant, and we can’t escape phones, e-mails and assorted gadgetry.
Then: People wanted their homes plain and simple as a counterbalance to a hectic world. And they didn’t want their mother’s ornately carved Victorian furniture. Gustav Stickley answered the desire for simplicity with straightforward furniture that emphasized craftsmanship, functionality and clean lines.
Now: Furniture manufacturers, seeing a parallel between the early 20th and 21st centuries, recently rolled out updated versions of Arts and Crafts furnishings at the 2006 Spring International Home Furnishings Market.
“It’s almost a mirror image of the turn of the 20th century,” notes Michael J. Danial, corporate historian for Stickley, the Manlius, N.Y., company that makes furniture in the style Gustav Stickley established in the early 1900s.
“The consumer is hungry for simplification,” says Kim Shaver, vice president of marketing communications for Hooker Furniture. “The heartbeat of Arts and Crafts is very simple, straight lines.”
Think bungalows and Frank Lloyd Wright, whose Prairie-style furniture also enjoyed a new day in the sun at the furniture market.
Manufacturers rolling out mission lines are targeting younger consumers, who they believe are focused on quality. “There’s a big swoon of Gen X and Gen Y consumers coming into the market. They are looking for traditional styles of the past to be reinterpreted for their lifestyle,” says Nathan Cressman, vice president of merchandising and international operations for Magnussen Home Furnishings, a Canadian manufacturer that introduced the Oak Park collection.
“It’s much like the Sony Walkman went into the iPod.” It’s the then and now of Arts and Crafts, a term used interchangeably with craftsman and mission. In its Simply American collection, Hooker uses the same white oak that Stickley used, quarter-sawn to highlight the wood grain, and the hand-rubbed finish, dovetail drawers and hammered bronze hardware underscore craftsmanship.
But a platform bed dressed minimally in white linens looks decidedly modern.
“It’s almost cozy contemporary,” Shaver says.
Additions to Stickley’s Pasadena Bungalow collection, a group that pays homage to Stickley contemporaries Charles and Henry Greene, exhibit the same modern influences. “It’s the softer side of Arts and Crafts,” says Danial.
Corners are rounded, and an upholstered panel softens the headboard of the Monterey bed. Younger consumers, he says, want the quality but they don’t like
“heavy, clunky mission.”
Hooker is gambling that consumers will be willing to pay for the made-by-hand feel. Simply American, which is made in America, is priced about 30 percent more than the company’s other lines. The platform bed carries a suggested retail of $2,000; a dresser, $2,600. All prices are approximate, and it is common for furniture retailers to discount manufacturers’ suggested prices.
Copeland Furniture targets collectors with its Frank Lloyd Wright collection. Wright’s Prairie-style pieces were created to complement houses he designed. The Prairie style ran parallel to the Stickleys on the East Coast and the Greene brothers on the West Coast.
“This isn’t putting Frank Lloyd Wright’s name on a design we think he would have liked,” says company spokeswoman Abby Copeland. Rather, the Vermont-based company used the architect’s drawings, giving pieces only minor tweaks. For example, dining chair backs are slanted at 6.5 degrees. The originals were straight, but Wright did put the same slant on other chairs.
Like the original mission designers, today’s pieces focus as much on function as on form. Magnussen incorporates two very now features in its Oak Park night table: a metal button on the side of the piece turns a lamp off and on, and an electrical outlet inside the drawer provides a place to recharge a cell phone or PDA.
Function was a buzzword throughout the market - the world’s largest furniture showcase, which draws about 60,000 buyers, interior designers and architects to High Point, a town of about 85,000.
Designer Jena Hall, vice president of marketing and bedroom and dining design at Aspenhome, drew on personal frustration in incorporating a plug in a nightstand drawer because her housekeeper invariably left the clock radio unplugged.
“It’s that kind of solutions we look for,” says Hall, whose background is in architecture and interior design. “The role there is really solving lifestyle challenges in design.”
Smart design touches abound in the traditional-style pieces. A touch button turns on a light mounted at the base of the nightstand. No light glaring in the night, and no waking anyone else in the room. A pullout keyboard tray on a desk features not only a flip-up document tray but also USB ports and small lights on the sides of the tray to illuminate the keyboard.
Entertainment units are designed to adjust for ever-changing television sizes. By loosening a few bolts and sliding the pieces, the unit can grow from 45 inches to 67 inches. Suggested retail on the wall units starts at $1,999.
Plasma televisions are creating a divide: Should the trim units be tucked away or put on exhibit like fine art?
Show them, says Sean Wargo, director of industry analysis at the Consumer Electronics Association. The units have a “wife-acceptance factor,” and women often are driving the purchase of flat-panel TVs. Wargo worked with Magnussen to develop a collection of home entertainment units, many of which are open and simply styled.
Hide them, say Palm Beach designers Mimi McMakin and Brooke Huttig. The duo behind the Mimi and Brooke collection at LaneVenture created a stately secretary whose top doors conceal the plasma unit in the bedroom.
Show them, says Aspenhome’s Hall. “By the time the consumer spends $3,000 on a plasma TV, they want to show it off.”
Hide them, says Thomas O’Brien, a designer for Hickory Chair who is also known for his line with Target. O’Brien includes plasma lifts in his TOB collections and insists the pieces should be elevated for comfortable viewing in the bedroom.
O’Brien was among only a handful attaching names to new collections, seemingly a fading trend in the once licensing-crazy furniture world.
This market’s roster included:
Candice Olson, star of “Divine Design” on HGTV, introduced a soft contemporary collection at Norwalk Furniture.
Fashion designer Jessica McClintock lends her name to upholstery pieces at
C.R. Laine. The firm’s designers drew inspiration from her Victorian home in
San Francisco for the pieces, which, like a McClintock frock, are gussied up with dressmaker details.
Olson, who designed for private clients before her TV gig took over her schedule, showed her collections in spicy tones, a palette that dominated the market.
Hues ranged from a golden shade dubbed sweet potato to rusty versions and brighter melons and more pastel apricots.
Blues continued to be strong, with peacock having a presence along with teal, turquoise and lighter Tiffany-box blue.
“Those exhale colors” are prevalent says Amy Archer at Rowe Furniture in describing a peaceful palette of sea glass blue and celery green. “Color is a natural Prozac,” says Archer, adding that consumers crave color during times of instability. “If you look back at affluent times, the colors were dirty. In tough times, people need to have their pulse raised to make a purchase.”
Other colors:
• Grays and greige, a blend of gray and beige that looked stunning on casegoods in the TOB collection at Hickory Chair.
• Purples, which pair well with grays.
• Pink, which looked like a neutral in the tone designer Barbara Barry dubbed blush. The shade, says Judith Acks, vice president of Barbara Barry brand for Henredon, works with everything, complementing all wood tones and skin tones.
The pale pink, shown on walls and upholstery, gave only a whisper of color.
Archer dubs such shades “huetrals,” neutrals with just a tint of color.
How very now.
Source: azcentral.com
