Wallace Nutting by Drexel Granite Top Console Table

With a career of producing hand-tinted photographs of New England scenes distributed as prints, Wallace Nutting was widely known in the early 20th century when millions of copies of his work were sold. Of the hundreds of professional photographers who were active in the pictorialist genre and competing for the tourist trade, Nutting developed what was by far the largest and most prominent operation, employing nearly 200 colorists, framers and salesmen. He was also a craftsperson, writer and lecturer, and began his career as a Congregational minister. Retiring from the ministry in 1904, he moved from Cranston, Rhode Island, to New York City for a year, then to Southbury, Connecticut, from 1905 to 1912, followed by a move to Framingham, Massachusetts, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Nutting also built furniture, doing reproductions of colonial pieces, including chairs and cabinets. His writings included 20 books such as Old New England Pictures, Furniture of the Pilgrim Century and Virginia Beautiful. Nutting signed very few of the pictures he sold. Because of the sheer number sold, ten million by his own account, it would have been difficult in light of ill health and his interest in publishing and furniture-making for him to sign them all. This accounts for the various signature styles that can be found. Collectors have learned to recognize an authorized signature as well as Wallace Nutting's own. Signature styles can date a picture, and the combination of other elements can authenticate a signature.

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