VIVID- VIBRANT VISIONS IN DESIGN, the successful annual furniture design competition, celebrates its sixth year in Melbourne as part of FURNITEX, Australasia’s largest furniture and furnishings Trade Fair.

A selection of Australia’s most dynamic furniture designers and design students will showcase their newest and most unique creations at VIVID 2008, held at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre from 17 – 20 July.

Presented by FURNITEX and curated by the talented Uli Hasel, a number of exciting new products will be revealed to the industry for the first time in the categories of commercial, Concept and Student. This year an exciting new award will be added to the competition – the VIVID GREEN AWARD. Read more »

Three floors of the Bard Graduate Center, at 18 West 86th Street in Manhattan, are filled with curvy, modern, bent and laminated beech easy chairs and chaise longues with woven, webbed seating — perfect for any beach house. There are daybeds with adjustable reading stands and companion floor-level book “cribs,” armchairs with rotating bases and elliptical blond dining tables with spindly legs that seem to float above the floor. A film on one wall depicts a glass house in a forest by the sea.

If this sounds idyllic, it is.

The exhibition “Bruno Mathsson: Architect and Designer” showcases the innovative designs of this Swedish creator, who lived from 1907 to 1988. It also promotes the ideology that, for most of the 20th century, informed modern Swedish design for the middle class: “the conviction that a well-functioning and aesthetically appealing environment, with architecture at its core, would lead to an improved quality of life,” as Dag Widman, a former curator at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, puts it in the show’s catalog. Read more »

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c49057) has announced the addition of The Furniture Industry in Russia 2007 to their offering.

This report offers a comprehensive picture of the furniture sector in Russia, providing trends in furniture production and consumption, furniture imports and exports. Factors determining the demand for furniture are examined, as well as furniture distribution and furniture supply structure.

Russian furniture production is broken down by segment and by federal district.

Russian furniture consumption is broken down by product (office furniture, upholstered furniture, kitchen furniture, cabinet furniture for home, specialized furniture). A profile of the Russian furniture consumer is outlined. Read more »

A delegation of 15 furniture store owners from the Arab Gulf countries will come to the southeastern Brazilian city of São Paulo to participate in the Brazilian Contemporary Furniture and Home Décor fair, to be held between February 9th and 12th at the Imigrantes Exhibition Centre. Organized by the Brazilian High-End Furniture Manufacturers Association (Abimad), the event will bring together 174 exhibitors, and will also be attended by the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce.

“The major store owners in the Middle East will attend the fair. The Arab Gulf countries have a huge potential for high-end furniture. The market is not yet fully explored,” said Rafael Molon, who is in charge of the international relations department at Abimad. Read more »

Someone’s trash might be another’s treasure, but if it’s in front of your house, it’s going to the city’s landfill.

The city’s refuse department picks up appliances, furniture and small tree limbs (smaller than 4 feet). This time of year workers also are vacuuming leaves.

Most materials end up in the city’s landfill off South Park Road. Newspapers, aluminum and bi-metal tin cans and plastic bottles placed in the proper containers are recycled.

The city provides homeowners with recycling bins for newspapers and clear bags for plastics and cans – at no charge.

Barbara Goff, administrative assistant with the city’s refuse department, said requests for pickup are handled as they are called into the office. Read more »

HAVERTY FURNITURE COMPANIES, INC. will release third quarter 2006 earnings results on Thursday evening, November 2, 2006. In conjunction with the release, Havertys will hold a conference call with analysts and investors on Friday, November 3, 2006 at 10:00 a.m. (EST) to discuss its financial results.

Interested parties may listen to the call at http://www.streetevents.com (Individual Investor Center) or the Company’s web site at http://www.havertys.com (For Investors) and may access a replay of this call through Friday, November 10, 2006 at the same web site addresses. A replay will also be available after the conclusion of the call via telephone at approximately 12:00 p.m. (EST) through Friday, November 10, 2006. The number to access the call playback is 1-800-405-2236, conference ID: #11074653. Read more »

From the small mountaintop town of Cragsmoor in upstate New York, Peter Harrison has a thriving one-man furniture business. His studio-produced tables, benches, cabinets and wine racks can be ordered in a variety of woods and customized sizes and shipped anywhere UPS will deliver.

But, first and foremost, Harrison considers himself an artist — not a furniture maker.

While he recognizes that his pieces have specific uses — to cradle a bottle of wine, store clothes, display magazines — the New Yorker’s hope is that their aesthetics outshine their purpose.

“An end table is bought to fill a space, but doesn’t have an important role in someone’s life, except maybe to put their keys on it,” Harrison said. “Too often furniture is viewed as primarily functional, when in reality it is used no differently than a sculpture. I build furniture that is distinctive, furniture that doesn’t blend into the background, furniture that stands out for its beauty and uniqueness.” Read more »

Made in America. The phrase is starting to take on the same quaint, anachronistic feel as, say, “Mr. Smith received a gold watch from the company after 40 years of loyal service.” It’s simply another stark reality of our globalizing world. But to assume that American manufacturers have to padlock the factory doors and move overseas is to deny the innovative spirit – and bulldog determination – that birthed and nourished our nation’s economy.

Just ask Century Furniture. This Hickory, N.C.-based maker of fine, high-end home furnishings is doing what many view as “the impossible.” It is keeping its factories open.

Century, nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, has seven manufacturing facilities and some 1,200 business partners. (The company doesn’t call them employees because each one actually owns a stake in the business.) It is one of the last, lonely holdouts in the area that proudly calls itself “The Furniture Capital of America.” About two-thirds of its wood manufacturing competitors have closed up shop and moved their manufacturing to China.

According to Hardwood Review Weekly, which keeps track of these statistics, between 2000 and 2006, 279 U.S. furniture factories closed in 29 states, totaling more than 64,000 lost jobs. Between 2000 and 2005, North Carolina lost 68 percent of its 32,000 furniture jobs. Read more »

The Mid Century retro modern furniture movement has taken center stage in the world of design furniture today. In recent years, mid-century modern furniture, glass, ceramics, and textiles have become hugely popular among those who appreciate the stylish contribution these pieces make to contemporary homes.

At the close of World War II the US was electrified with optimism about the future. America began a love affair with fashionable living in a post atomic world. Kidney shaped tables, boomerang sofas, and amoeba forms are the hallmarks of this distinctive 1950’s furniture style. Retro modern chic is characterized by space age materials, innovative biometric designs, and trend setting colors.

The leading architects of this school include Ray and Charles Eames, Harry Bertoia, Arnie Jacobson, Isamu Noguchi, and Eero Saarinen among others. Read more »

Antiques dealers are always rediscovering the past, searching for forgotten or undervalued areas in the market, where important discoveries can be made — and new collections formed from scratch.

Now extravagant late-19th-century and very-early-20th-century furniture from Europe is surfacing in the market both in the United States and abroad.

“It’s been the Russians, Middle Easterners and Asians who have been collecting this over the past 20 years,” said Elaine Whitmire, the head of decorative arts and single-owner sales at Sotheby’s New York. “Americans are just starting to look at it.”

The most newsworthy event in the field this fall in New York may be Sotheby’s Oct. 26 sale of a private collection comprising 450 lots of furniture made by notable late-19th-century Paris cabinetmakers like François Linke and his contemporaries Henry Dasson and Alfred Beurdeley. The sale includes 75 lots that were bought directly from the Linke family or from Jean Bieder, his last foreman and the man Linke chose to succeed him. Read more »