Henredon Writers Chair

Founded in 1945, Henredon is one of the more recently minted of the top-tier North Carolina furniture makers. Among collectors, Henredon is admired both for its sleek, sexy sofas, dining tables and other furniture of the 1970s and for its partnerships with noted designers, a program that began in the 1950s with decorating icon Dorothy Draper and architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

From the start, Henredon has been best known for its bedroom furniture and vintage case pieces, such as cabinets, dressers, armoires and credenzas. The brand was established in Morganton by former Drexel Furniture Company executives, and its name is a portmanteau term, derived from the first names of three of the company’s founders — T. Henry Wilson, Ralph Edwards and Don VanNoppen. (Sterling Collett, a fourth figure mentioned in Henredon Furniture’s history, chaired the company and served as treasurer).

Though not on the cutting edge stylistically, Henredon’s production — as well as its output under the Heritage-Henredon label — has always kept pace with contemporary tastes. 

In 1953, High Point manufacturer Heritage began a collaboration with Dorothy Draper, famed for bravura interior design commissions such as the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. Her taste for bold, modernized historical style is reflected in the incised baroque medallions of her España line and the geometric motif of her Viennese furnishings group. In 1955, Henredon launched the Taliesin Ensemble by Wright, named after the architect’s houses in Wisconsin and Arizona. Taliesin dressers and coffee tables are recognizable by their angular shapes and a dentil motif on their edges. In those years, Henredon had a cross-licensing agreement with Heritage, and Draper and Wright's furniture is usually labeled Heritage-Henredon.

In later decades, Henredon produced collections for such designers as Ralph Lauren and Laura Ashley. The company took a stylish turn in the 1970s, fabricating new and unusual forms like mirrored room dividers and console tables with rounded corners and burl-wood veneers. Such pieces are priced in the $3,000 to $4,000 range, as are chests of drawers by Draper. Wright furniture tends toward the higher end, priced around $7,000. Henredon was an aesthetically diverse maker, but its furniture commands attention and makes a statement in any eclectic decor.

The vintage Henredon furniture for sale on 1stDibs includes bedroom furniture, coffee tables, chairs and other pieces.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw sweeping social change and major scientific advances — both of which contributed to a new aesthetic: modernism. Rejecting the rigidity of Victorian artistic conventions, modernists sought a new means of expression. References to the natural world and ornate classical embellishments gave way to the sleek simplicity of the Machine Age. Architect Philip Johnson characterized the hallmarks of modernism as “machine-like simplicity, smoothness or surface [and] avoidance of ornament.”

Early practitioners of modernist design include the De Stijl (“The Style”) group, founded in the Netherlands in 1917, and the Bauhaus School, founded two years later in Germany.

Followers of both groups produced sleek, spare designs — many of which became icons of daily life in the 20th century. The modernists rejected both natural and historical references and relied primarily on industrial materials such as metal, glass, plywood, and, later, plastics. While Bauhaus principals Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created furniture from mass-produced, chrome-plated steel, American visionaries like Charles and Ray Eames worked in materials as novel as molded plywood and fiberglass. Today, Breuer’s Wassily chair, Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair — crafted with his romantic partner, designer Lilly Reich — and the Eames lounge chair are emblems of progressive design and vintage originals are prized cornerstones of collections.

It’s difficult to overstate the influence that modernism continues to wield over designers and architects — and equally difficult to overstate how revolutionary it was when it first appeared a century ago. But because modernist furniture designs are so simple, they can blend in seamlessly with just about any type of décor. Don’t overlook them.

Armchairs have run the gamut from prestige to ease and everything in between, and everyone has an antique or vintage armchair that they love.

Long before industrial mass production democratized seating, armchairs conveyed status and power.

In ancient Egypt, the commoners took stools, while in early Greece, ceremonial chairs of carved marble were designated for nobility. But the high-backed early thrones of yore, elevated and ornate, were merely grandiose iterations of today’s armchairs.

Modern-day armchairs, built with functionality and comfort in mind, are now central to tasks throughout your home. Formal dining armchairs support your guests at a table for a cheery feast, a good drafting chair with a deep seat is parked in front of an easel where you create art and, elsewhere, an ergonomic wonder of sorts positions you at the desk for your 9 to 5.

When placed under just the right lamp where you can lounge comfortably, both elbows resting on the padded supports on each side of you, an upholstered armchair — or a rattan armchair for your light-suffused sunroom — can be the sanctuary where you’ll read for hours.

If you’re in the mood for company, your velvet chesterfield armchair is a place to relax and be part of the conversation that swirls around you. Maybe the dialogue is about the beloved Papa Bear chair, a mid-century modern masterpiece from Danish carpenter and furniture maker Hans Wegner, and the wingback’s strong association with the concept of cozying up by the fireplace, which we can trace back to its origins in 1600s-era England, when the seat’s distinctive arm protrusions protected the sitter from the heat of the period’s large fireplaces.

If the fireside armchair chat involves spirited comparisons, your companions will likely probe the merits of antique and vintage armchairs such as Queen Anne armchairs, Victorian armchairs or even Louis XVI armchairs, as well as the pros and cons of restoration versus conservation.

Everyone seems to have a favorite armchair and most people will be all too willing to talk about their beloved design. Whether that’s the unique Favela chair by Brazilian sibling furniture designers Fernando and Humberto Campana, who repurposed everyday objects to provocative effect; or Marcel Breuer’s futuristic tubular metal Wassily lounge chair; the functionality-first LC series from Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret; or the Eames lounge chair of the mid-1950s created by Charles and Ray Eames, there is an iconic armchair for everyone and every purpose. Find yours on 1stDibs right now.