1968 Drexel Walnut Partners Library Table Midcentury Farmhouse Office Desk
View Similar Items
1968 Drexel Walnut Partners Library Table Midcentury Farmhouse Office Desk
About the Item
- Creator:Drexel (Manufacturer)
- Dimensions:Height: 30 in (76.2 cm)Width: 72 in (182.88 cm)Depth: 36 in (91.44 cm)
- Style:Rustic (In the Style Of)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Period:
- Date of Manufacture:1968
- Condition:Wear consistent with age and use. Good overall, distressing to top from use, some staining to surfaces, wear commensurate with age and use, see pictures.
- Seller Location:Dayton, OH
- Reference Number:Seller: 276261stDibs: LU5343221338402
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 vintage Drexel furniture for sale on 1stDibs includes end tables designed by Edward Wormley, walnut side tables designed by Kipp Stewart and lots more.
- Antique Chippendale Mahogany Kneehole Bowfront Library Office Table Writing DeskLocated in Dayton, OHAntique Chippendale style kneehole writing desk featuring rectangular form with bowfront, eight drawers, brass batwing hardware and polished glass top. Originally purchased at the Rike Kumler...Category
Early 20th Century Chippendale Desks and Writing Tables
MaterialsMahogany
- Antique American Empire Style Mahogany Library Writing Table Office Desk VanityLocated in Dayton, OHAn antique American Empire style dressing table, circa 1930s. Originally featured a mirror along the back which was eventually removed to use as an office desk. Made from mahogany ...Category
Early 20th Century American American Empire Desks and Writing Tables
MaterialsMahogany
- Antique Italian Renaissance Revival Walnut Figural Library Table Writing Desk 52Located in Dayton, OHAntique Neo-Renaissance Revival parlor / library table or writing desk, circa 1870s Made of walnut featuring Neoclassical styling with high relief figural carvings of cherubs / putti...Category
Antique 1870s Renaissance Desks and Writing Tables
MaterialsWalnut
- Antique Thomas Turner Manchester English Mahogany Writing Desk Library TableBy Thomas TurnerLocated in Dayton, OH"An antique Thomas Turner English Victorian era writing desk. Made from solid mahogany with a tooled red leather inset top. Features 2 hand dovetailed drawers within the frieze, squa...Category
Antique Late 19th Century Victorian Desks and Writing Tables
MaterialsMahogany
- Antique Quartersawn Oak French Renaissance Revival Dining Table Library DeskLocated in Dayton, OHAntique 19th Century Figural French Renaissance Revival / Elizabethan style Dining or Library Table. A rectangular form made from oak with a quartersawn top. Features a thick gadrooned apron with ""S"" scrolls, gothic arches, drop finials and carved lions heads along each corner. The table is supported by hand turned robust baluster supports leading to an ornate carved base featuring Delphin (Dolphin) feet. Includes original draw leaf style extensions and make shift table...Category
Antique 1880s Renaissance Revival Dining Room Tables
MaterialsOak
- Dakota Jackson French Art Deco Postmodern Mahogany Executive Partners Desk 96"By Dakota JacksonLocated in Dayton, OHVintage Dakota Jackson post modern Art Deco style executive partners desk featuring mahogany with leather insert and stainless steel frame. A V-Shape pattern veneer top with Black Leather inset. 2 pedestal cabinets below: each with 2 standard drawers and 1 file drawer, front and back. Polished Stainless Steel drawer pulls, post, floor plates, and arced trestle supporting desktop. DJ Chelsea Black Leather, Polished Polyresin finish. Dakota Jackson (born August 24, 1949) is an American furniture designer known for his eponymous furniture brand, Dakota Jackson, Inc.,[1] his early avant-garde works involving moving parts or hidden compartments,[2][3] and his collaborations with the Steinway & Sons piano company.[1] Jackson helped establish the art furniture movement in 1970s SoHo,[4][5] later becoming a celebrity designer in the 1980s.[6][7][8] His background in the world of stage magic helped him get his first commissions and is often cited as the source of his point-of-view.[6][9] Early life Dakota Jackson was born on August 24, 1949, and grew up in the Rego Park neighborhood of Queens, New York. Stage Magic Jackson's father, Jack Malon, was a professional magician.[10] Mr. Malon learned the trade from his own father, who studied stage magic in early 20th century Poland.[1] Jackson began studying magic at a young age and sometimes performed with his father.[11] Jackson's name, in fact, grew out of a road trip to Fargo, North Dakota.[11] Throughout his adolescence and into his early 20s, Jackson immersed himself in the world of magic.[2] In 1963, Jackson began to perform in talent shows at his junior high school, William Cowper JHS 73 (which is known today as The Frank Sansivieri Intermediate School),[12] and at children's birthday parties.[13] Jackson also began to build his own props, including large boxes for sawing a woman in half and small boxes from which doves would emerge in full flight.[11] Jackson acknowledges the importance of these early experiences with magic to his later career as a furniture designer: "The demands of performance taught me how to discipline myself to achieve aesthetic ends."[1][2][14] After Jackson graduated from Forest Hills High School in 1967, he continued performing as a magician, working in art galleries, night clubs, touring in the Catskills, and giving private performances at society events.[2][13][15] When he was 17, Jackson had studied with magician Jack London to learn the dangerous bullet catch trick.[16] "What appealed to me was the notion of doing things that appeared miraculous" Jackson once recalled.[6] "I was interested in spiritualism. I was interested in things like bullet catching, things that really challenged individual sensibilities, that were frightening, on the edge."[2] He didn't find the opportunity to perform the trick publicly until a decade later at Jackson's final professional performance as a magician.[1] It was documented in Andy Warhol's Interview (magazine), in a story titled "Dakota Jackson bites the bullet."[1][16] Jackson admits that he sometimes tires of references to his magician background, although he acknowledges it as an important part of his history.[2] The Downtown Arts Scene In the late 1960s, Jackson moved into a loft on 28th Street in Chelsea.[1][17] Jackson became part of the Downtown scene, a community of "artists, dancers, performers, and musicians" who moved to the neighborhood for the cheap rent and social life.[1][8][17][18] In October 1970, Jackson performed with the Japanese group Tokyo Kid Brothers at New York's La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (also known as Café La MaMa) in a rock musical production called "Coney Island Play" ("Konī airando purē).[19] The show explored themes of cross-cultural communication and understanding[19] and was a follow up to the group's debut performance of "The Golden Bat" at La MaMa earlier that summer.[20][21][22] Jackson played the part of a "clever conjurer."[19] Over the next few years, Jackson became interested in minimalist dance and performed in the dance companies of Laura Dean and Trisha Brown.[2][15][23] Jackson credits his exposure to minimalism and minimalist dance in particular as having had a strong influence on his approach to design; in 1989, Jackson told the Los Angeles Times: For me the essential fineness of a design is in the idea, not the object itself ... In minimalism, the object is pared down to its basic meaning by stripping away all the excrescence ... —those elements that do not contribute to the pure idea.[24] Design career In the early 1970s, as he experimented with performance and dance, Jackson began branching out as a special effects consultant to other magicians, film producers, and musicians[2][23] such as Donna Summer.[6][9] The loft also gave Jackson an opportunity to apply his creativity and building skills: "These were times when lofts were not ... luxury condominiums. These were tough, tough raw spaces ... and we artists, bohemians, creative people, we created our environment. So I had to build".[17][25] Recognizing his skills as a builder, Jackson decided to shift away from performance and become a full-time maker.[1][15][17] He began making a variety of objects, including furnishings for other artists and magic boxes with hidden compartments for art collectors and galleries.[17][24] Jackson's social connections helped spread word about his work[15] and this led to his first commissions.[1] Early Commissions Desk for John Lennon by Dakota Jackson In 1974, Jackson's career as a designer began when Yoko Ono asked him to build a desk with hidden compartments for husband John Lennon.[26] "She wanted to make a piece of furniture that would be a mystical object; that would be like a Chinese puzzle," Jackson recalled in a 1986 interview published in the Chicago Tribune.[6] The result was a small cubed-shaped writing table with rounded corners reminiscent of Art Deco era style.[15] Touching secret pressure points opened the desk's compartments.[23] This commission helped build Jackson's reputation and allowed him to merge his experience as a magician and performer with his developing interest in furniture.[27] In 1978, a bed designed for fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg garnered Jackson even more notoriety.[8][10][28] [29] Called "The Eclipse", the bed was described in The New Yorker as "large, astounding, sumptuous, with sunbursts of cherry wood and quilted ivory satin at head and foot."[10] A lighting system positioned behind the headboard switched on automatically at sunset and spread out rays of light "like an aurora borealis,"[2][17] which grew brighter and brighter until turning off at 2 am.[23][30] Commissions like these continued to come in[8] and Jackson soon became known as a designer to the rich and famous.[30] Some of his other clients from this period included songwriter Peter Allen, Saturday Night Live creator and producer Lorne Michaels, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, and soap opera actress Christine Jones.[8] The American Art Furniture Movement and the Industrial Style In the late 1970s, Jackson was among a small group of artists and artisans producing and exhibiting hand-made furniture in New York.[5][31] Jackson and his peers were part of the "American Art Furniture Movement," a group sometimes called the "Art et Industrie Movement,"[32] named after the leading art furniture gallery of the era,[32] Art et Industrie, founded by Rick Kaufmann in 1976.[33] In a 1984 Town & Country article titled "Art You Can Sit On," Kaufmann said he created the gallery to "serve as a locus to the public for artists and designers creating new decorative arts."[31] The works on display were "radical objects" that drew from a number of fine art traditions, including "Pop, Surrealism, Pointillism and Dada [which were] "thrown together with the severe lines of the Bauhaus and the Russian avant-garde, mixed with Mondrian's color and filtered through a video sensibility—all to create a new statement."[31] The article described Jackson as a "ten-year veteran of the genre" and pointed to the "clean forms and quiet colors" of his furniture.[4] Jackson showed a variety of industrial-looking lacquer, metal, and glass works at Art et Industrie, including his Standing Bar (also known as the Modern Bar),[33] a lacquered cabinet that Jackson designed in 1978 for his wife (then-girlfriend) RoseLee Goldberg.[13] Other works from this period include the T-Bird Desk, Self-Winding Cocktail Table, and the Saturn Stool...Category
Late 20th Century Art Deco Desks and Writing Tables
MaterialsStainless Steel
- Fabulous Red Painted 19th Century Rustic Pine Farmhouse Dining Table or DeskLocated in Hopewell, NJWarm and welcoming French style farmhouse table, made in the 19th century, having very nice rich patina on natural pine top and fabulous original red painted base. It has a generous ...Category
Antique 19th Century French Rustic Farm Tables
MaterialsPine
- 18th Century Spanish Oak and Walnut Library TableLocated in Rio Vista, CAHandsome 18th century Spanish colonial library table or refectory table fronted by a single drawer. The carved oak case is supported by turned b...Category
Antique 18th Century European Spanish Colonial Farm Tables
MaterialsOak, Walnut
$1,900 Sale Price32% Off - Oval Partners Desk Victorian Walnut OfficeLocated in Potters Bar, GBGorgeous burr walnut oval partners desk in the Victorian manner This is a true partners desk with drawers on both sides so plenty of storage Great side so perfect for a home office s...Category
Vintage 1970s Victorian Desks and Writing Tables
MaterialsWalnut
- 17th C. Provencal Hand Carved Antique Side Table Walnut Desk Drawers Farm LA CALocated in West Hollywood, CA17th C. Provencal Hand Carved Antique Side Table Walnut Desk Drawers Farm LA CA . Beautiful 17th into 18th century Provençal Continental table in walnut and Fruitwood with center drawers. These tables were used in the Mas and Manoir . It's the perfect addition to a Provincial design , as a side table, between two chairs, to have a chinoiserie piece of art on top . Or as a small bureau desk...Category
Antique 17th Century European Desks and Writing Tables
MaterialsMetal
$10,720 Sale Price20% Off - 18th Century Tyrolean Farmhouse Dining/ Kitchen Table in Fruitwood from AustriaLocated in Miami, FLAn exceptionally beautiful farm house table from the Tyrolean region of Austria in fruitwood with the rich patina of age acquired from its 250 year history! A multipurpose table, it would have served as a dining table as well as a table used in the preparation of food. Utensils and bread would have been stored in its deep and long drawers, which are decorated with small etched field flowers on the fronts. The box stretcher would have provided a footrest in addition to rendering the table stronger. Offers pegged construction, dovetailed drawers and original wooden pulls. This Alpine table...Category
Antique Late 18th Century Austrian Country Farm Tables
MaterialsFruitwood
$3,413 Sale Price34% Off - Rosewood and Chrome Drexel Index Writing Desk Library Table, circa 1970sBy Drexel, Milo BaughmanLocated in New York, NYStunning midcentury, Hollywood Regency, Post Modern design writing table, desk, made by Drexel as part of their Index series, possibly designed by Milo Baughman, circa 1960/1970s. T...Category
Mid-20th Century American Mid-Century Modern Desks and Writing Tables
MaterialsChrome