Artsy fabrics make stylish comeback
Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, September 13, 2010
HIGH POINT - Art for the home isn't limited to the walls. You can find it all over the upholstery.
Fabric derived either directly or indirectly from art is a trend growing in popularity as manufacturers reach out to provide the wow factor for their dealers.
 You can use the Man in the Hat image or supply your own for an unusual look from Haute House. |
 Southern Furniture’s French script chair goes well with transitional body cloths, and retails for $699.Southern Furniture’s French script chair goes well with transitional body cloths, and retails for $699. |
Fabric as art or vice versa has been around for centuries (think toile, for instance). But upholstery vendors have revisited the genre, and in the last 18 months or so have introduced everything from French script with vintage fonts to bird themes to a famous image of Chairman Mao.
One of the more attention-grabbing pieces at April's High Point market was a Century settee with an iconic image of the Beatles, dressed out in their Sergeant Pepper regalia.
Alex Shuford III, vice president of sales and marketing, said the company tours Showtime and other fabric shows looking "for something that will excite us" and provide "a lobby statement" for its own showroom here.
Shuford said a consumer might buy a piece like the Beatles settee "to stick in their library but basically it's not a high-velocity item. You might sell 10 of them (at a retail price between $4,500 and $5,000). That would be a huge number for an item like that."
The Fab Four provided creative thunder for Century during market. The piece was not in the lobby but nestled in its own area of the showroom. "I bet we had 25 people at market taking their picture in it," he said.
Shuford said the company has a history of putting designs "with borderline shock value" in its showroom. One market included what was jokingly referred to as the "heaven and hell rooms" - one room in serene light blues and a companion room with black wood and red upholstery. Another market's piece de resistance was Oscar de la Renta's Zeus chair with the face of Zeus carved on the back.
 Designed for Taylor King exclusively by Valdese Weavers, this chair’s fabric is based on the East View of Mount Vernon Mansion, a lithograph published in 1859. Retail is $2,295. |
 Individual birds could be cut from this settee from C.R. Laine, matted, framed and displayed as true art. The fabric is from the Spanish mill Vilber, distributed by High Five Textiles. |
"We've had some that were pretty out there," said Shuford. "I remember a chair covered in alpaca that kind of looked like dreadlocks."
The Beatles fabric is by Andrew Martin for Kravet and is made in a woven panel instead of the usual measurement of yardage. It highlights the back cushion of a wing-back leather settee designed specifically for the panel by Craig Statton.
"It's a great conversation piece," Shuford said.
C.R. Laine had the same image of the Beatles, only in color, which it used on an ottoman targeted at about $1,100.
The company often goes with artsy themes like the October 2009 High Point Market's honeybee look, which included stylized bees and fabrics with honeycombs - part of an effort to bring attention to the dwindling bee population.
But a bigger theme at the April market was birds, which Creative Director Holly Blalock dedicated tongue-incheek to the nesting effect and tabbed the pattern "Flock Together Spring."
The pattern is based on detailed artist drawings from the Victorian era when museum specialists grouped and named birds according to their similarities.
 Designer Vivienne Tam created her own vision of Chairman Mao, used in this pedestal chair for Rowe and covered with fabric from Valdese Weavers. It sells for $1,280. |
 Century designed this leather and fabric frame around a woven panel of the Beatles by Andrew Martin for Kravet. |
"Our daily interaction and familiarity with birds as well as their aesthetic appeal make bird patterns wildly popular among American consumers," Blalock said, adding that birds in the fabric could be individually matted and framed.
"These are artsy fringe pieces," she noted. "It's pieces that you put into little nooks and alcoves because they're very conversation-evoking and they speak to your personality as an eclectic person who likes to collect and find. They're not typically your big main great room pieces."
Haute House, a Los Angeles specialty house known for edgy design, usually comes to market with old photographlike images super-sized on fabric - art in itself.
The process, used in the company's Histography Collection, is achieved by two processes, either dye sublimation print or digital wet print, depending on whether the base fabric is linen, cotton or natural fiber.
Images include a large vintage print of an ocean liner sailing into New York harbor, used on a sofa, and arm chairs and ottomans with Flapper-era facial images. The look is designer oriented but also will play in Peoria, according to President Casey Fisher, noting that customers can take the company's image or use their own.
"We do a lot of grandkids," Fisher added. "We've done old grandparents on ottomans. We've done old pictures of businesses, all sorts of weird stuff, lots of faces. It's just one step deeper into customization."
Script fabrics, often of vintage ancestry, have also become popular the past several markets, possibly because they have more mass appeal than some of the novelty textiles.
"I wish you were here now," said Richard Graves, vice president of sales and marketing for upper-end upholstery maker Southern Furniture. "We have 100 (pieces) coming through (production) today. It's really popular."
Graves said the company "was looking for something along transitional lines that fit the nice textured plain cloths that we do. We first used it as accent pillows. We really liked it a lot so we decided to put it on a chair."
While the old fonts provide interest, the script fabric "is just neutral enough that it has a little bit of an edge to it and fits well as an accent," Graves said.
Standing in the showroom lobby of Rowe Furniture here three markets ago, fashion designer Vivienne Tam's iconic Chairman Mao chair drew a lot of attention, much good for its Andy Worhal-like hipness, some bad from market- goers who considered it political blasphemy.
Nonetheless, it is a genuine piece of art that, before furniture, found its way into the culture through high fashion and cotton T-shirts. "When she first came to the States way back when, she designed the Chairman Mao pattern, and it was so well received internationally that it's now in a bunch of different museums," said Kate Holcomb, director of marketing.
Holcomb said the Mao chair was never intended for the masses. "It's for a more sophisticated cliental, the higher-end person with a more sophisticated and urban aesthetic," she said.
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