Set of 4 Hollywood Regency Style Klismos Side Chairs
View Similar Items
Set of 4 Hollywood Regency Style Klismos Side Chairs
About the Item
- Creator:Drexel (Manufacturer)
- Dimensions:Height: 32.25 in (81.92 cm)Width: 18.75 in (47.63 cm)Depth: 21 in (53.34 cm)Seat Height: 18.5 in (46.99 cm)
- Sold As:Set of 4
- Style:Hollywood Regency (Of the Period)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:1940-1950
- Condition:The chairs have been repainted black and newly reupholstered. The bottoms of the legs show some scuff marks but the set is in overall excellent condition. Wear commensurate with age and use.
- Seller Location:Kenilworth, IL
- Reference Number:Seller: 45851stDibs: LU6534228339742
Drexel
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 oakwood, 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, reportedly closed its doors. The company rebranded as Drexel in 2017.
The range of vintage Drexel furniture for sale on 1stDibs includes end tables designed by Edward Wormley, walnut side tables designed by Kipp Stewart and lots more.
- Set of 3 Early 19th Century Sabre Leg Klismos Form Side ChairsLocated in Kenilworth, ILThree sabre leg Klismos form side chairs of European beech and mahogany with seats upholstered in suede. Denmark, circa 1820.Category
Antique 1820s Danish Biedermeier Side Chairs
MaterialsSuede, Beech, Mahogany
$4,000 Sale Price / set20% Off - Pair of New York mahogany Klismos slip seat side chairs, 1825Located in Kenilworth, ILPair of New York Klismos slip seat side chairs in mahogany and figured mahogany veneers. The chairs have a curved and figured veneer applied crest rail with scrolled edge over a curv...Category
Antique 19th Century American American Classical Side Chairs
MaterialsUpholstery, Mahogany
- Austrian Biedermeier Klismos Chair '1830'Located in Kenilworth, ILBiedermeier Klismos side chair of European beechwood and mahogany veneers. The seat is upholstered in Italian oil tanned leather with brass round head tacks. The front legs are turne...Category
Antique Mid-19th Century Austrian Biedermeier Side Chairs
MaterialsBrass
- Pair of English Regency Upholstered Slip Seat Side Chairs, 1815Located in Kenilworth, ILPair of English Regency Period faux rosewood painted beechwood Klismos side chairs inlaid with pierced brass embellishments on the center of the back rail and the corners of the crest rail. The chairs are fitted with upholstered slip seats...Category
Antique 1810s English Regency Side Chairs
MaterialsBrass
$5,200 Sale Price / set20% Off - Set of three American upholstered seat mahogany side chairs, 1800-1810By Duncan PhyfeLocated in Kenilworth, ILSet of three American mahogany upholstered seat side chairs on reeded sabre legs with flared feet. The London cabinetmakers book of this period describes a scroll back chair with a bell-shaped seat and sweeping Grecian front legs with a hollow below the cross banister. The description fits these chairs and identifies them as a popular model in New York, circa 1800-10. In these examples, the reeded upper rear leg posts frame a solid crest rail over a horizontal back rail & lower banister rail. The seat frames and corner blocks are tulip poplar with white pine medial brace and oak rear seat rail. Fragmented nailers were spliced with new poplar and mahogany surfaces were cleaned and finished in shellac. Seats have been reupholstered in a Scalamandre damask fabric...Category
Antique Early 19th Century American Neoclassical Side Chairs
MaterialsUpholstery, Mahogany, Oak
- Set of four Connecticut Valley Hitchcock rush seat side chairs, c. 1830Located in Kenilworth, ILSet of 4 classic Hitchcock style side chairs of painted and stencil decorated mixed woods, fitted with handwoven rush seats. The turned and bowed crest rails are morticed to the turn...Category
Antique Mid-19th Century American Side Chairs
MaterialsRush, Wood
- Set of 4 Klismos-Style ChairsLocated in Isle Sur La Sorgue, VaucluseTwo chairs and two armchairs. Original cognac-coloured leather seats with fine gold embossed frieze. Dimensions provided below are for the armchairs. The chairs measure (in centim...Category
Antique 19th Century French Neoclassical Dining Room Chairs
MaterialsLeather, Wood
- Hollywood Regency Aluminum Chair SetLocated in Brooklyn, NYSet of four, Hollywood Regency, Art Nouveau, chairs with organic, vine motif, cast aluminum frames are newly upholstered in a rich, contrasting, burgundy, gold velvet. The Vitrolite ...Category
Vintage 1960s American Hollywood Regency Dining Room Chairs
MaterialsAluminum
$3,600 / set - Set of Eight Hollywood Regency Style Louis Pistono Distressed Dining ChairsBy Louis PostinoLocated in Stamford, CTA fine set of eight Louis Pistono white distressed dining chairs. Each having a carved ribbon back with red under paint on a distressed off-white frame. ...Category
Mid-20th Century Hollywood Regency Dining Room Chairs
MaterialsWood
$3,250 Sale Price / set51% Off - Set of 16 Klismos-Form Dining ChairsLocated in New York, NYBoston, Massachusetts, circa 1820. Mahogany (secondary woods: Birch and maple; slip seats: Birch and pine) Measures: 33 1/4 in. high, 18 5/8 in. wide, 19 ¼ in. deep (overall). Ex Coll: Private collection, until 2004; to [Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 2004]; to private collection, 2004 until the present. Exhibited: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1999–2000, Boston in the Age of Neoclassicism, 1810–1840, p. 57 no. 21D illus. in color // Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 2001–2002, of the Newest Fashion: Masterpieces of American neoclassical Decorative Arts, pp. 93 cat. 26, 95 illus. in color two chairs from the set / Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 2014-2015, very rich and handsome, p. 30 no. 5 illus. in color two chairs from the set. One of the signature forms of furniture of the neoclassical period in the United States is the klismos chair as interpreted by a group of Boston cabinetmakers in the period circa 1820 (see Page Talbott, “Seating Furniture in Boston, 1810–1835,” The Magazine Antiques CXXXIX [May 1991], pp. 966ff.). These chairs are usually characterized by sabre legs at the front and the back and curved crest rails typically enriched with flaming mahogany veneers, their ends often punctuated by stylized leaves, anthemia, or scrolls, and center splats decorated with leaves, drapery, lyres, etc. Just as it is easy to identify a New York or Philadelphia side, or dining, chair of the period, so Boston chairs have a certain “look” that sets them apart from chairs from all other American cabinetmaking centers in this period. The sumptuous nature of the lotus bud and tulip-carved swags which form the back splats of these chairs is offset by the simplicity of the crest rail, in which oval veneered panels are encircled by a raised molding, and by the reeded stiles which seamlessly sweep down to become first the side-rails and then the front legs of the chairs. Although the form of these chairs relates them to many comparable Boston examples of the period, none of these other chairs feature the paw feet that terminate the front legs of the present set of chairs, a feature that appears to be otherwise unknown on Boston side chairs...Category
Antique 19th Century American Neoclassical Dining Room Chairs
MaterialsMahogany
$225,000 / set - Classical Regency Style Black Lacquered Gilded ChairsBy DrexelLocated in Rochester, NYSet of four Neoclassical Regency style side chairs / dining chairs with beautifully tailored striped upholstered seats and backs, faux bamboo turned legs, gilded crossed arrows at to...Category
Late 20th Century American Neoclassical Dining Room Chairs
MaterialsUpholstery, Wood
- Pair of Italian Hollywood Regency Klismos ChairsLocated in Houston, TXStunning pair of Italian Hollywood Regency klismos style chairs. These chic high style Italian side chairs are painted a soft gray/green with gilt accents and have great splayed legs or saber legs. Our vintage Klismos chairs...Category
Vintage 1960s Italian Classical Greek Side Chairs
MaterialsWood
$4,650 / set