Is Drexel Furniture good quality?

Yes, Drexel Furniture is good quality, and owing to the commendable level of craftsmanship that characterizes the company's work, Drexel's furnishings typically retain or increase in value over time. Vintage Drexel dining tables , dressers and other pieces remain highly desirable for enthusiasts of mid-century modern design.The North Carolina manufacturer initially became known for pieces inspired by historic European furniture. In the postwar era, Drexel adapted to changing tastes and 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. The Profile and Projection collections of the period, designed with sculptural shapes by John Van Koert , also see demand on today’s secondary market. Find vintage Drexel Furniture for sale on 1stDibs.

Walnut Declaration Furniture

1960s Drexel

Drexel Declaration Coffee Table

Drexel Mid Century Modern Furniture

Drexel Midcentury Bedroom Furniture

Drexel Mid Century Extension Dining Table

Kipp Stewart Drexel Declaration

Materials

Rosewood, Walnut

$3,395

H 29.25 in W 52 in D 22 in

Vintage Mid Century Walnut Desk in Style of Drexel Declaration by Kipp Stewart.

Located in Seattle, WA

A Mid-Century Modern walnut desk designed in the style of Kipp Stewart's iconic Drexel Declaration collection. This piece showcases the clean lines, tapered legs, and functional simp...

Category

Vintage 1970s Mid-Century Modern Desks and Writing Tables

Materials

Walnut

$1,550

H 28 in W 21 in D 22 in

Sculptural Splay Leg Night Stand or End Table by Kipp Stewart Drexel Declaration

By Kipp Stewart, Drexel

Located in Atlanta, GA

Sculptural Splay Leg Night Stand or End Table, designed by Kipp Stewart for Drexel's Declaration Line, American, circa 1960s. It has been cleaned and Danish oiled.

Category

Vintage 1960s American Mid-Century Modern Night Stands

Materials

Materials

Porcelain, Wood, Walnut

Sold

H 31 in W 72 in D 20 in

Walnut Dresser By Drexel For Declaration

By Drexel, Kipp Stewart, Stewart MacDougall

Located in Brooklyn, NY

Eleven drawer dresser by Drexel for their Declaration line, designed by Stewart MacDougall and Kipp Stewart. Great walnut grain, clean modern lines, tapered legs, original brass pull...

Materials

Glass, Walnut

Sold

H 29 in W 104 in D 40 in

Kipp Stewart for Drexel Declaration Walnut Dining Table, Newly Refinished

By Drexel, Kipp Stewart

Located in South Bend, IN

A gorgeous Mid-Century Modern walnut extension dining table By Kipp Stewart for Drexel, "Declaration" Collection USA, 1959 Measures: 60"W x 40"D x 29"H. Extends up to 104"W with t...

Category

Vintage 1950s American Mid-Century Modern Dining Room Tables

Materials

Materials

Oak

$4,800

H 72 in W 82 in D 16.5 in

Mid Century Danish Modern Wall Unit with Shelves & Cabinets with Desk in Teak

Located in Philadelphia, PA

A large Scandinavian wall unit circa 1960's. It features teak wood finish with a drop down center desk. The unit is totally modular and can arranged to your liking. It also includes ...

Category

Vintage 1960s Danish Scandinavian Modern Shelves

Materials

Teak

$79,658 / item

H 95 in W 54 in D 25 in

Amuneal's Brass Pantry Cabinetry

By Amuneal

Located in New York, NY

Amuneal's Brass Pantry Cabinetry, part of our metal Kitchen Collection, is designed as a feature element for any space. The three doors on the upper cabinets are fabricated with a kn...

Category

2010s American Modern Cabinets

Materials

Brass

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Walnut Declaration Furniture For Sale on 1stDibs

Find many varieties of an authentic piece of walnut declaration furniture available at 1stDibs. Was constructed with extraordinary care, often using wood, walnut and ceramic. Your living room may not be complete without an item from our selection of walnut declaration furniture — find older editions for sale from the 20th Century and newer versions made as recently as the 20th Century. A choice in our collection of walnut declaration furniture is a generally popular piece of furniture, but those created in Mid-Century Modern and Modern styles are sought with frequency. You’ll likely find more than one object in our assortment of walnut declaration furniture that is appealing in its simplicity, but Drexel, Kipp Stewart and Kipp Stewart & Stewart MacDougall produced versions that are worth a look.

How Much is a Walnut Declaration Furniture?

Prices for a piece of walnut declaration furniture start at $595 and top out at $11,500 with the average selling for $2,295.

Drexel for sale on 1stDibs

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.

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. The first offerings from Drexel Furniture were simple: a bed, washstand and bureau all crafted from native oak wood, sold as a bedroom suite for $14.50.

One of Drexel’s early innovations was to employ staff designers, something the company initiated in the 1930s. 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. 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. Others replicated the ornate details of 18th-century chinoiserie or the embellishments of Queen Anne furniture. Always ready to adapt to new customer demands, during World War II, Drexel built a sturdy desk designed especially for General Douglas MacArthur.

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. In the 1970s, Drexel introduced high-end furniture in a Mediterranean style.

Drexel changed hands and visions throughout the years. It was managed by one of the original partners — Samuel Huffman — until 1935, at which time his son Robert O. Huffman took over as president. 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. and more.

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. By 1957, the company that had started with a factory of 50 workers had 2,300 employees and was selling its furniture nationwide.

Drexel underwent a series of name changes in its long history. Its acquisition of Southern Desk Company in 1960 bolstered its production of institutional furniture for dormitories, classrooms, churches and laboratories.

In the following decades, contracts with government agencies, hotels, schools and hospitals brought its high-quality furniture to a global audience. U.S. Plywood-Champion Papers bought Drexel Enterprises in 1968, and it became Drexel Heritage Furnishings.

In 2014, the last Drexel Heritage plant, in Morganton, North Carolina, closed its doors. The company rebranded as Drexel in 2017.

The vintage Drexel furniture for sale on 1stDibs includes end tables designed by Edward Wormley, walnut side tables designed by Kipp Stewart and lots more.

A Close Look at Mid-century Modern Furniture

Organically shaped, clean-lined and elegantly simple are three terms that well describe vintage mid-century modern furniture. The style, which emerged primarily in the years following World War II, is characterized by pieces that were conceived and made in an energetic, optimistic spirit by creators who believed that good design was an essential part of good living.

ORIGINS OF MID-CENTURY MODERN FURNITURE DESIGN

Emerged during the mid-20th century
Informed by European modernism, Bauhaus, International style, Scandinavian modernism and Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture
A heyday of innovation in postwar America
Experimentation with new ideas, new materials and new forms flourished in Scandinavia, Italy, the former Czechoslovakia and elsewhere in Europe

CHARACTERISTICS OF MID-CENTURY MODERN FURNITURE DESIGN

Simplicity, organic forms, clean lines
A blend of neutral and bold Pop art colors
Use of natural and man-made materials — alluring woods such as teak, rosewood and oak; steel, fiberglass and molded plywood
Light-filled spaces with colorful upholstery
Glass walls and an emphasis on the outdoors
Promotion of functionality

MID-CENTURY MODERN FURNITURE DESIGNERS TO KNOW

Charles and Ray Eames
Eero Saarinen
Milo Baughman
Florence Knoll
Harry Bertoia
Isamu Noguchi
George Nelson
Danish modernists Hans Wegner and Arne Jacobsen, whose emphasis on natural materials and craftsmanship influenced American designers and vice versa

ICONIC MID-CENTURY MODERN FURNITURE DESIGNS

VINTAGE MID-CENTURY MODERN FURNITURE ON 1STDIBS

The mid-century modern era saw leagues of postwar American architects and designers animated by new ideas and new technology. The lean, functionalist International-style architecture of Le Corbusier and Bauhaus eminences Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius had been promoted in the United States during the 1930s by Philip Johnson and others. New building techniques, such as “post-and-beam” construction, allowed the International-style schemes to be realized on a small scale in open-plan houses with long walls of glass.

Materials developed for wartime use became available for domestic goods and were incorporated into mid-century modern furniture designs. Charles and Ray Eames and Eero Saarinen, who had experimented extensively with molded plywood, eagerly embraced fiberglass for pieces such as the La Chaise and the Womb chair, respectively.

Architect, writer and designer George Nelson created with his team shades for the Bubble lamp using a new translucent polymer skin and, as design director at Herman Miller, recruited the Eameses, Alexander Girard and others for projects at the legendary Michigan furniture manufacturer.

Harry Bertoia and Isamu Noguchi devised chairs and tables built of wire mesh and wire struts. Materials were repurposed too: The Danish-born designer Jens Risom created a line of chairs using surplus parachute straps for webbed seats and backrests.

The Risom lounge chair was among the first pieces of furniture commissioned and produced by celebrated manufacturer Knoll, a chief influencer in the rise of modern design in the United States, thanks to the work of Florence Knoll, the pioneering architect and designer who made the firm a leader in its field. The seating that Knoll created for office spaces — as well as pieces designed by Florence initially for commercial clients — soon became desirable for the home.

As the demand for casual, uncluttered furnishings grew, more mid-century furniture designers caught the spirit.

Classically oriented creators such as Edward Wormley, house designer for Dunbar Inc., offered such pieces as the sinuous Listen to Me chaise; the British expatriate T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings switched gears, creating items such as the tiered, biomorphic Mesa table. There were Young Turks such as Paul McCobb, who designed holistic groups of sleek, blond wood furniture, and Milo Baughman, who espoused a West Coast aesthetic in minimalist teak dining tables and lushly upholstered chairs and sofas with angular steel frames.

Generations turn over, and mid-century modern remains arguably the most popular style going. As the collection of vintage mid-century modern chairs, dressers, coffee tables and other furniture for the living room, dining room, bedroom and elsewhere on 1stDibs demonstrates, this period saw one of the most delightful and dramatic flowerings of creativity in design history.