Kittinger, Vanguard help furnish White House
By Ray Allegrezza -- Furniture Today, January 26, 2009
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Neither Ray Bialkowski, president of Buffalo-based case goods maker Kittinger Furniture, nor Dixon Mitchell, president of Hickory, N.C.-based upholstery maker Vanguard, were in Washington for last week's inauguration of President Obama, but some of their furniture was.
Bialkowski told Furniture/Today that the White House commissioned Kittinger to produce two presidential fireside chairs and a utility table for use in the inauguration.
The items were added to the set of six Kittinger chairs that the White House had ordered for the 2005 inauguration of President Bush.
“Kittinger has had the honor of being asked to build custom furniture for the White House for more than 40 years,” Bialkowski said.
He said the company had four weeks to produce the custom chairs, which normally take from 12 to 14 weeks to manufacture. “Even so, we did what we needed to do to get the furniture to the White House on time,” he said.
In North Carolina, upholstery maker Vanguard Furniture was selected to make a settee that will be used in the White House by the Obama daughters, Sasha and Malia.
According to Mitchell, the order for the Battersea settee came from Vanguard customer Anthropologie, a high-end retailer that is helping the Obamas accessorize the White House. The settee is a reproduction of an antique that is on display in the retailer's Washington store.
Vanguard, which normally requires about 30 days to produce custom-ordered furniture, had less than a week to make the settee.
Mitchell said everyone at Vanguard realized the significance of the order and all worked together to beat the deadline.
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