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Revived Hitchcock Chair recaptures the past

Heath E Combs -- Furniture Today, October 13, 2011

The newly revived Hitchcock Chair’s signature stenciling is seen on this New London chair from the Classic Dining Room Collection, in a black and Riverton finish.RIVERTON, Conn. - The backwards N, the rush seats, stenciled designs and quality New England craftsmanship - yes, Hitchcock Chair is back.
     Last year a group of partners including Rick Swenson and Gary Hath of Canton, Conn., and their wives, Nancy and Maryanne, purchased the brand's assets.
     Swenson, whose connection with Hitchcock began when he became its exclusively authorized furniture restorer in 2005, had been buying and restoring old pieces from the line since the company closed in 2006. He sold them from a store beside his shop, Still River Antiques.
     As that business grew, he and his partners talked about buying the Hitchcock brand's intellectual assets, including the name and patterns.
     This spring, the partners began producing the distinctive brand of bedroom furniture, chairs and dining tables. Headboards start at about $600.
     The company is offering about 40 items and plans to add another six chairs to the line by November. It also is opening a case and assembly plant in nearby Winstead, Conn., to add dining hutches and buffets.
     While the company is doing some small sales on a wholesale basis, most of its current business is selling direct to consumers. As its production capability increases it will begin calling on stores to establish a dealer network, starting with former Hitchcock retailers, Swenson said.
     Hitchcock is focused on maintaining the superior quality it has boasted throughout its history, he said.
     "There are chairs that we will be making that are almost stick for stick replicas of what Lambert (Hitchcock, the founder) was making in the 1800s. I've actually been collecting his original furniture when I could find it and it's amazing the consistency between products," Swenson said.
     There's certainly some romance to Hitchcock Chair, a Connecticut-based hardwood furniture line that isn't just one of the oldest names in domestic furniture manufacturing, but also is known for the John Tarrant Kinney book on the original company's origins and designs.
     The company began at the dawn of America's industrial revolution in 1818, according to Kinney's book, when Lambert Hitchcock converted his shed into a shop with equipment powered by a waterwheel. He and his apprentices produced furniture parts, experiencing good and bad times before closing in 1864.
     Kinney's book detailed his efforts to restore the old factory in Riverton, once known as Hitchcocksville, in 1946 to begin production again. He was successful and the plant ran for six decades until a challenging retail environment, overseas competition and fruitless efforts to find a buyer led to its closure in 2006.
     Swenson said production is cranking up at a "slow and steady" pace. Rather than launch an entire line at once, products will have test runs to see how each sells, he said.
     The company has a staff of seven who can almost pick up where the former company left off, Swenson said. Their experience with the old Hitchcock Chair ranges from 28 years to over 50 years. They know the plans, prints and stencil artwork and how to use them, he said.
     The design catalogue the company is working with goes back to 1946 and could easily include a thousand items Kinney was making when he reopened Hitchcock, in addition to archive stencils of designs dating to the 1830s, Swenson said.
     Hitchcock has three lines for sale - Classic in hard maple with a traditional style, Shaker in cherry and Country Heritage in wormy soft maple.
     While the company has interest in showing at furniture markets, Swenson said that for now, the new Hitchcock is still gauging what and how much to build. Hitchcock last showed at the High Point Market several years ago, before the 2006 shutdown.
     "We're pretty much all in with this company as far as my partner and I. We've thrown everything we have at it," Swenson said. "The question is how deep a pool do we want to dive in with this. We're hoping over the next year to figure out the size of our market."
     One problem with the former company, he said, was that in its latter years it continued to scale for the larger volume it had in the 1970s and 1980s, eventually running at a loss. Swenson's goal is to maintain profitability.
     The company plans to offer a Signature Series of limited-edition chairs featuring Christmas, Thanksgiving, Major League Baseball and university motifs, he said.
     The new pieces feature the signature backwards "N" that first appeared in a trademark of one of Hitchcock's original pieces in the phrase: "L. Hitchcock.Hitchcocks-ville. Conn. Warranted."
     The company's products can be seen online at http//hitchcockchair.com.

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