Pair of Midcentury Henredon James Mont Carved Lacquered Horseshoe Chairs

James Mont’s life as an unmistakably talented furniture designer and interior decorator could fill the pages of a best-selling novel or be reimagined as a Hollywood feature film. From the 1930s through the 1960s, Tinseltown’s glitterati and Manhattan’s Mafia underworld coveted his sofas, coffee tables and table lamps.

Mont was born Demetrios Pecintoglu in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1904 to a family of artists. He reportedly studied architecture and art in Spain and France, and during the 1920s, Mont immigrated with his family to the United States.

Mont and his family settled in New York, where he found work in a Brooklyn electrical supply shop. There he sold hardware and designed his own lighting fixtures. The latter caught the eye of a gangster named Frankie Yale, who commissioned him to refurnish his house. Mont’s opulent designs drew on Art Deco, Hollywood Regency and were occasionally marked by chinoiserie, then a very popular trend in decorating. He created the kind of low-profile side tables and sofas that are frequently associated with mid-century modernism, and he is credited today with helping popularize the integration of Asian influences in modern American design.

Mont soon attracted New York City’s most infamous crime bosses, including Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Frank Costello. For a range of mobsters, he created fashionable, functional and sophisticated pieces such as collapsible home bars that would fold down and out of view — a particularly convenient feature during Prohibition — and tables and desks with secret drawers, which were also handy to Mont’s shady clientele.

“You bought a bar from him, and he would also deliver booze in a baby carriage,” antiques dealer and furniture retailer Todd Merrill told New York about Mont in 2008.

Mont designed a room for the World’s Fair in 1939 and later befriended Hollywood celebrities such as Bob Hope, who was best man at his wedding, Irving Berlin and Lana Turner. During the 1940s and ‘50s, Mont continued designing furniture, mastering finishing techniques such as lacquering and incorporating a distinctive “leafing” print effect with silver and gold into his pieces.

Mont’s designs enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s, and his pieces continue to be sought after by collectors.

On 1stDibs, discover a range of vintage James Mont sideboards, tables and storage cabinets.

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 furniture of the 1970s and for its partnerships with noted designers, a program that started in the 1950s with decorating icon Dorothy Draper and architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

From the start, Henredon — the brand name is a portmanteau term, derived from the first names or initials of three of the company’s founders — has been best known for its vintage case pieces, such as cabinets, dressers, armoires and credenzas. Though not on the cutting edge stylistically, the company’s production has always kept pace with contemporary tastes. In 1953, Henredon 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. The pieces are recognizable by their angular shapes a dentil motif on their edges. In those years, Henredon had a cross-licensing agreement with the Heritage furniture company, and Draper and Wright 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. As you will see on 1stDibs, Henredon was an aesthetically diverse maker, but its furniture commands attention and makes a statement in any eclectic decor.