Designers get inspiration from traveling the globe
By Thomas Russell -- Furniture Today, November 10, 2003
High Point — When designing a period piece, you can't expect to get inspiration from a photo alone. Just ask Marlene Meeker, president of Atlantic International Trade.
Her latest collection, Versailles at Home, was inspired by a trip to Marie Antoinette's abode just outside Paris. Other ideas have come from her travels to Provence, Rome, Tuscany and Naples.
Like many furniture designers, she says travel is important to her work.
"I'm trying to keep history alive," Meeker said of Versailles at Home, which includes beds, sofas, chairs and small tables. Delicate floral carvings, bronze mounts, and silver and gold leaf designs highlight many of the pieces, giving them an authentic look.
"I picked out the best of French design over the centuries and put them into this collection," she said. Her showroom in Market Square has a European flair with its hand-painted canvasses of scenes from Tuscany.
Don Essenberg, merchandise manager for Broyhill Furniture, said he and his team drew inspiration from 16th and 17th century European furniture designs at the Hearst Castle in California and Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, renowned European-influenced mansions.
The result: Vintage World, a heavily carved, ornate case goods collection and a major introduction this October for Broyhill.
"It was the kind of look we felt would be very appropriate for our consumer," Essenberg said. "It was grand scale, but not so massive it would not fit into a 2,500-square-foot home."
He said the journeys he made earlier this year to Hearst and Biltmore were important because they gave him a firsthand look at the furniture and the architecture of the homes.
"It was a great source of inspiration," Essenberg said.
In April, Drexel Heritage introduced its Tuscany collection, inspired by the Frances Mayes book "Under the Tuscan Sun," a memoir of her experiences in the region. Company officials, including Mike Black, senior vice president of design, spent time in her home in Cortona, Italy, taking photos of furniture and the house. The Drexel team also visited antique stores in a nearby town, which gave them more ideas.
Antique stores also are a source of inspiration for Mark Emerson Smith, vice president of marketing at Emerson et Cie. So are homes and lodges he visits during regular journeys to Italy and Spain.
"It helps me get ideas and translate that to the manufacturer," he said.
Craftsmen that Emerson et Cie works with in Italy and Spain account for much of the authentic look and feel of the company's furniture, thanks to their expertise in distressing, hand painting and finishing. While it remains a challenge in some plants in Asia, others sources are having some success producing the look Emerson hopes to achieve.
Bill Faber, Century Furniture's vice president of product design and development, travels overseas at least once a year for ideas. The 40-piece Kentshire dining room and occasional collection, for instance, was inspired by a street in London of the same name, where Faber visited several antique stores.
But he emphasized the pieces are not necessarily reproductions.
"We use the influence from an antique and adapt that to how we live today," he said.
