Getting Better With Time...

This week a lady contacted me through our blog. She has in her home a set of our Chippendale Side Chairs. Her set includes (2) 865-01 Arm Chairs and (4) 865-02 Side Chairs. She would love to add two more side chairs to her set.

When contacting Hickory Chair she learned that we retired this style about 10 years ago. I offered to share her story with you! If you have or know of a set of these beautiful mahogany vintage side chairs, please contact me. I have great hope that we can help her finish out her set!

Why am I so confident? If you go to Craig's List or Ebay and type in Hickory Chair you would be amazed with how many pieces are available for sale. The quality of craftsmanship allow the pieces to live several lives... I have a piece my Grandmother purchased in the late 1930's from Hickory Chair as well as a full size bed. I am proud of my heirloom Hickory Chair pieces. I am confident that the pieces I have purchased from the company will be able to furnish my grandchildren's homes someday too!

Do you have a story to share? We would love to hear it!

Designer Takes on the Chair - CountyTimes.com

Our friend, Mariette Himes Gomez was recently featured in an article in the Litchfield County Times online site CountyTimes.Com. This top story Designer Takes on the Chair, showcases how very involved Mariette is not only with Hickory Chair's new introductions, but her client's projects, a new book Apartments (due spring 2010), licensed collections including a fabric collection with Hinson & Company, photographs with Soicher-Marin and her custom rugs through Doris Leslie Blau Gallery, New York.

In the article it follows her amazing career from its humble beginnings to where she is now. With the launch of exciting new pieces for her very successful seven year old Mariette Himes Gomez Collection for Hickory Chair, she revisited the 20th Century looking to intriguing forms from the 1920's, 1930's, 1940's and 1950's. Her astute eye brought together a diversified mix of new pieces for the collection that blend not only with her existing collection, but with the other offerings from Hickory Chair.

Traveling to New York? You can visit The Shoppe located at 504 East 74th Street. In this amazing retail shop not only can you find pieces from her Hickory Chair collection, but also pieces from her custom workshop and amazing antiques she has found in her travels!

Revisiting Vintage Hickory Chair

In May we shared an amazing story about a family that had inherited vintage twin beds made by the Hickory Chair Manfacturing Company that were made in approximately 1928. In this story, Vintage Hickory Chair, the daughter of the original owner had reached out to us at Hickory Chair to share her story. She had told us that these beds were the wedding gift to her parents. They had been purchased in Poughkepsie, NY and they now were in the daughter's home in Colorado. She promised to share pictures of the bed. Last week she kept her promise and emailed these pictures to us! In these pictures you can see the wonderful condition these beds are in after the 80 years of use by this family.

The dedication of the employees in each era of Hickory Chair's history that began in 1911 has allowed pieces to become heirlooms. Whether you find Hickory Chair vintage pieces in your family's home, ebay, craig's list or your local antique dealer's shop, there are countless pieces that have timeless quality and style.

Share your vintage Hickory Chair story today!

Kudos to Stirling Design!

Our friend and HCC University Alumni member, Julianna Stirling, owner of Stirling Design in Fairfield, Connecticut, shared with us a picture of a client's poolhouse!

Julianna chose our Camp Chair and Ottoman, introduced at the October 2008 market, know for its distinctive form and surprizing comfort.

This great Campaign style chair is made here at Hickory Chair. Our craftsmen turn the ash wood to create the faux bamboo look. Each leg, arm stump and back post are capped with a custom solid brass turning inspired by the original folding chair that inspired it. Looking for a really comfortable lounge chair that is not huge? The Camp Chair could be the perfect solution!

Please share with us pictures of how you have used Hickory Chair pieces for your clients. We would love to share them with other HCC University Alumni!

re-de-sign by Cathy Whitlock

Today a large padded envelope arrived in my mailbox! Enclosed was an autographed copy of re-de-sign by Cathy Whitlock. She has written a text book for university interior design programs. We are very honored to be included in this beautifully written new book!

Fairfield Books, the publisher, describes it as "This book is a clear and concise survey of the field of interior design, providing a look at the newly expanded role of the interior designer and offering an array of career alternatives from the tried-and-true areas of residential and contract design to specialty design. Whether branching into areas as traditional as product and furniture design to the new trends of lifestyle branding and internet merchandising, Whitlock covers the full array of challenging and diverse career choices for those considering a career in design as well as the established designer who wants to take their professional practice to new heights."

Hickory Chair and its associates is very honored to be included throughout the book. Profiles of Alexa Hampton, Mark Hampton and our own Cathy Mitchell are included as well as quotes from Jay Reardon. Hickory Chair room scene and silhouette imagery was selected to illustrate the book from cover to cover!

The book is available through Amazon now. For a sample chapter review is available from Fairchild Books. Enjoy!

Habitually ChicTM Shares Our Story!

We were very honored to have Heather Clawson, author of the renouned blog, Habitually Chic, attend HCC University last week! She has just completed a wonderful series of posts that illustrates her HCC University experience! We hope that you enjoy her wonderful journey told through pictures and stories.

The first post was entitled "Not Your Grandmother's Hickory Chair!" For those of you who have visited The Mezzanine at Hickory Chair or the showroom in High Point, you know that we make much more than 'red mahogany 18th Century furniture"! (We proudly make that too because we have a very loyal following for this specific era).

The next day she was inpired to share her experience touring the wood products facility in a post entitled "Hickory Chair Factory Tour: Day One". In this tour she showcases not only the tedious steps we take to make not only heirloom quality pieces but also personalized pieces for individual homes.

After a good nights rest, she entitled the next post "Hickory Chair Factory Tour: Day Two" and shared her experience touring through the other side of our factory that houses the upholstery shop. Her enthusiasm for hand made upholstery echos throughout her post.

The first post she had planned to post was postponed when she decided to attend HCC University. This blog post was focused upon Suzanne Kasler's collection for Hickory Chair! We celebrated the first anniversary of this collection at the April Market in High Point. Habitually ChicTM's post, Suzanne Kasler for Hickory Chair, is beautiful created showing the muse, her sketches and the Hickory Chair final reproduction or adaptation of that piece. Shown here in this picture is Heather and Tobi Fairley that attended HCC University along with our friends from Utah, Maryland, South Dakota, Arizona, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Texas, Louisiana,Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas.

In today's post Oh Baby Update, she shared with all of us to see one of her installations for a family with a new baby on the way. In the post she shares the sources from the paint to the furniture. We appreciate her post regarding the Chair that says "I wish that I had visited Hickory Chair before we chose a glider from another retailer who shall remain nameless because then the beautiful Meredith fabric from Schumacher would have matched on all four sides! It still looks great though and can be moved to the living room in the future."

We appreciate everything that Heather has shared about her Hickory Chair experience. We hope that it is just the beginning of a long friendship. As she is a designer as well as a blogger, we hope that our craftsmen in Hickory are able to assist Heather in providing solutions for her client's homes in the future!

The Little Black Dress In Your Closet

Many of you may be familiar with Tobi Fairley after reading about her in the March 2009 issue of Traditional Home magazine. She was named one of the top 20 young interior designers in America. This week she attended Hickory Chair University where we had the opportunity to get to know her better. She is one of many designers who has enjoyed working with Hickory Chair to find solutions for her clients as well as for her own home. Shown below is a picture of the personalized Hickory Chair 6060-70 Serpentine Chest is from Tobi's home. The way she chose to 'dress it' made it perfect for her room. She chose Kohl finish with Antique Ivory drawer fronts and then replaced the reproduction brass hardware with COHTM antique silver V-3 bail pulls and Z-3 escutcheons.

The 6060-60 Serpentine Chest is a reproduction from the collection of H.F. DuPont that resides in the Winterthur Museum. The museum was originally the family home where H.F. not only raised a family but amassed the world's largest collection of American decorative arts. The Winterthur Country Estate collection has now celebrated its 10th anniversary.

These timeless heirloom quality Hickory Chair pieces are like the classsic little black dress in one's closet. You can add pearls and pumps go formal or you can add a jean jacket and boots and go casual with that same little black dress. Our classic pieces have great proportion and scale. Our employees allow you to select from over 6o finishes, COHTM hardware, hand decoration and special construction requests that will allow you to create a one of a kind piece for your home. Why settle for standard when you can have it MADE?

I Had it Made...

I was walking through the upholstery shop and saw this beautiful mahogany Baltimore Sofa with a special construction tufted back. This customer had a very specific idea in mind for their room. With our ability to custom make pieces, we were able to say yes to this family! I wish you could have seen how beautiful it was upholstered in this velvet fabric with the handsome finish that isso clear it allows the wood grain and inlay to shine through the tinted transparent layers of finish.

As I gazed upon it I thought about how each tuft was meticulously hand made. The upholsterer told me that it took most of the work day to hand tuft this one sofa's back. It takes patience and skill to hand tuft. So many other companies just button the "tufted" pieces now. I wish you could have watched him take his 15" long tufting needle and thread it with polyester twine with a hand made button. Then he carefully inserted the needle through the fabric and hypoallergenic filling through to the back of the piece. Then he carefully folded the fabric in the tuft and shifted the filling until he knew it was just right. Then he walked to the back of the sofa and carefully knotted the twine around the anchor to insure that in the years this family had the one of a kind Baltimore Sofa in their room they would never have an issue with buttons coming out or untied. Over and over this process was repeated until each tuft was perfected. The way HICKORY CHAIR employees anchors the twine is unqiue to our company. In all the years has upholstery been made, none of our customers have ever seen a technique like our craftsmen devised!

What charges my batteries is watching the careful attention to detail each of our craftsmen take. They know that when someone invests in a hand made Hickory Chair piece they expect the finest in quality and tailoring. With a 98.8% quality approval rate from our customers we feel we are on the right track!

This adaptation of a fine antique from the archive of Albert Sack is truly timeless. Albert Sack is the world's greatest authority of American antique furniture. From his archive we have the great fortune to work alongside him to select these timeless forms, like the Baltimore Sofa, whose great proportion and scale allow them to transcend time. In this very modern room scene the Baltimore Sofa is upholstered in two colors of silk and a very dark finish named Sable. This classic 18th Century form has become very modern in this application of finish and fabric.

Selecting pieces for your home is a very personal decision. No one should have to settle for off the shelf things when they could have just Had It Made!

What an honor!

We have just completed a fantastic Hickory Chair University event! Our group is from Georgia, Pennsylvania, Washington state, Ontario, Missouri, New Mexico, South Carolina, Colorado, New York and Minneapolis. We enjoyed a great day touring the factory on Tuesday and then today we toured the High Point Showroom!

We collected wishes that we are already brainstorming on how to make come true. This particular group had tremendous energy and ideas for ways to stay in touch and share the personalized pieces we hand make through the web site.

We were honored to have the blog authors of lifeinaventicup.com and coco+kelley join us for HCC University. We appreicate their time and enthusiasm for the the hand made products made in Hickory!

Suzanne Kasler & Hickory Chair In The News!

Ellen Gefen of Industry Update and thehome.com visited the Hickory Chair Showroom during the Spring market. She is a great supporter of Hickory Chair and we can always count on her to come see our color and style trends.

She recently shared on thehome.com a story about using color and accessories to create a fresh new look. She interviewed Suzanne Kasler in the Hickory Chair showroom during the Fall 2008 market. The message is as relevant today as it was when she captured this beautiful room inspired by a trip to Africa by Suzanne and her family. Most pieces were upholstered in natural linen or neutral prints but with a punch of yellow linen and an ethnic woven on the armless chairs, her African accessories created a dynamic room!

Enjoy the full interview by clicking on the link:

http://thehome.com/2009/05/01/suzanne-kasler-use-interchangable-accent-pieces-for-an-easy-new-look

A Wonderful Reunion of HCC University Alumni

One of my favorite things about the High Point Market each spring and fall is the reunion with our HCC University Alumni! I can not even count how many HCC University Alumni that came to the showroom over the past week. It was wonderful to catch up and share stories.

I was thinking about all of the HCC University wishes that came true this market and as I realized how many had come true, I thought you would enjoy reviewing the list!

• I wish you made some modern swivel chairs, low profile swivel chairs and swivel chairs without skirts. We have developed with our supplier a new mechanism which allows us to keep our custom engineered 8-way hand tied spring system and provide you 9 low profile swivel chairs!





• I wish you had a sleep sofa. Our Silhouettes Upholstery program has a queen size sleep sofa with an exclusive tri-fold mechanism and Air Dream mattress.
• I wish that you had more fully upholstered scale sofas with exposed legs. Our Silhouettes Upholstery program offers your choice of 17 exposed legs!
• I wish that you could change the arms on your sofas and chairs. Our Silhouettes Upholstery program includes 13 arm choices!
• I wish that you had more high back sofas. We offer an extended height option to Silhouettes Upholstery.
• I wish you had deeper sofas. Silhouettes Upholstery offers an extended depth option.
• I wish you had more chaises in your line. Silhouettes Upholstery offers a variety of armless, 2 arm or single arm chaises.
• I wish that you could change the back construction. There are 5 back choices in Silhouettes Upholstery.
• And we offer Made To Measure lengths on most of the pieces as well!

These and other wishes were granted at the Spring Market. We are in the process of posting all of the price lists and pictures on Homebase. Keep sharing your wishes. You know we listen and we will make them come true!

They MADE It For Me!

"I wish that you could make the Piedmont Dining Table counter height for me" asked Suzanne Kasler. The craftsmen at Hickory Chair received the request and within 48 hours responded YES!

Shown in the Hickory Chair showroom at the April 2009 market is the personalized 114" Piedmont Dining Table with a Scrubbed Ash top and the base in Birch painted finish made counter height! She chose a set of the Amsterdam Counter Stools to accompany this one of a kind table!

Literally every day we receive requests for special constructions to adapt our timeless pieces for clients homes. Our employees have great pride in their abilty to make one of a kind pieces. They enjoy being custom craftsman you!

Looking For Some Fresh Thinking & Products In High Point?

Nation's Top Designers Have It MADE

Come see what our amazing artisans and craftsmen can do to help you provide one of a kind solutions for your clients!

The Spring Market Is Almost Here!

Contact your Hickory Chair Sales Representative for an appointment today!

High Point Market!

It is hard to believe that the spring 2009 furniture market in High Point is right around the corner! We are all hard at work finishing up new market introductions, swatching the new fabrics, proofing price lists and writing press releases. In two weeks we will have our sales representatives attending presentations to learn the nuances of the new products. Then on Friday, April 25th our doors will open and we will reveal the AMAZING new introductions.

What is new this season? What is NOT new is my best answer! Not only do we have some beautiful new Mariette Himes Gomez pieces, but also we have amazing upholstery introductions as well! I have already spilled the news about low profile swivels that is an answer to many wishes during the past HCC University I Wish sessions. We are making hundreds of wishes come true this season. Some of them are "I wish you had more exposed leg sofas that are scaled like your skirted sofas. I wish you could leave off the skirt and add a beautiful leg. I wish that you had sectionals with right or left arm corner sofas so you could use just 2 pieces to make a sectional. I wish that you had more chaises. I wish that you had more exposed wood M2M pieces." Shown are the new Gentry M2M series from our Upholstery collection. These and many other wishes are coming true this season.

I Wish...

I wish your Madigan Bar Stools came armless. Yes I know you make them backless and also with backs and arms. My customer wants backs with no arms. No problem! The designer contacted Hickory Chair for a special construction and we were able to make these one of a kind bar stools for their client.

How can our artisans help you find the perfect solution for your home?

Low Profile Swivels - Another Wish Has Come True!

At HCC University we enjoy the 'I Wish' sessions. The spring 2009 market in High Point will make more wishes come true than any other furniture market than we can ever remember! The first wish that came true is 'I wish you had modern swivel chairs' or 'I wish you had low profile swivel chairs'.

We have engineered a new mechanism that will allow us to keep our custom engineered seating featuring 8-way hand tied springs on chairs that have previously had exposed legs. These amazingly comfortable chairs are already available to order for immediate shipment! Your Hickory Chair sales representative and customer service representative can give you the simple up-charge to apply for this amazing new swivel option for these favorite Hickory Chair chairs!

Green Thoughts

A friend read an article over the weekend in the Charlotte Observer newspaper and thought of Hickory Chair. It wasn’t a green article, but the writer, Allen Norwood, made a green statement by saying "that the greenest thing you can buy is one that lasts forever. It never goes to the landfill or has to be recycled." The article focused upon the fact that buying quality made things saves you money because they last. That makes them 'green'.

It made me think about the amazing craftsmen and artisans at Hickory Chair work tirelessly to create heirloom quality pieces with great respect for how the products are made. They carefully select antique pieces whose form and function have transcended time. They interpret the piece as a reproduction or adaptation to make relevant pieces for modern homes. With careful execution of the design and fine craftsmanship the result is heirloom quality since the company began in 1911. Countless pieces have been passed down from one generation to the next. Every day pieces can be found in antique shops, on eBay or Craigs List.

The ease of finding vintage pieces of Hickory Chair mirrors the author's statement "that the greenest thing you can buy is one that lasts forever. It never goes to the landfill or has to be recycled." I am sure that the craftsmen that have spent their careers at Hickory Chair would be proud to know that their hands work has resulted in heirloom quality pieces treasured today and not discarded in a landfill.

A couple of great listings of vintage Hickory Chair on eBay are linked below! The great thing about vintage Hickory Chair pieces is that with their great proportion, classic form and scale, the can complement the new one of a kind pieces that the craftsmen make today at Hickory Chair.

Hickory Chair VIntage Scoop Back Chairs

Hickory Chair Vintage Huntboard

One of a Kind Wood Products by Hickory Chair

With Hickory Chair's Customer's Own HardwareTM program you can send your own antique, custom or any hardware to us. We will then make a chest, china cabinet or any wood piece for you and install your hardware to your specifications. This custom made knob was purchased from Marjorie Skouras Design. The web site to view her custom made hardware is: marjorieskourasdesign.com. The Taylor Chest by Thomas O'Brien was ordered in the standard Antique Ivory finish with a set of 6 of these knobs.

Every day designers and sales associates call Hickory Chair with special requests to provide solutions for their clients. Hardware can be changed on almost all of Hickory Chair's wood products because they are made in Hickory, North Carolina. Over 60 finish selections, over 100 in stock hardware options as well as combination finishes or hand striping allow you to personalize pieces to suit the wishes of your clients.