| Some
of you fine visitors to our humble web site
may be unfamiliar with Heywood-Wakefield furniture-and
may be asking yourselves "Just what is this
Heywood-Wakefield furniture? And why is it so danged
popular?" Well, let's just take a brief stroll
through the how's, why's and wherefore's of Heywood-Wakefield
furniture...
By
the time Heywood-Wakefield introduced its "Heywood-Wakefield
Modern" furniture line in the 1930's, the
company had over 100 illustrious years of creating
top quality furniture...
Let's
go back in time to the 1820's when a much younger
America was suffering
in the throes of
the great seating famine. Seating was in such
short supply, people had to stand for days
on end. Thousands
of weary settlers headed west just to look
for a comfortable place to sit.
Then,
in 1826, a group of 5 brothers in Gardner,
Massachusetts, full of vim, vigor and derring-do
decided they'd had enough! Walter ("Dimples")
Heywood, Levi ("Giggles") Heywood,
Seth ("Grumpy") Heywood, William
("Sleepy")
Heywood, and Benjamin ("Doc") Heywood
began manufacturing simple chairs in a small
barn. Suddenly, the seating famine had a
solution, and
Heywood Brothers began selling their chairs
in ever increasing quantities.
The business flourished and by the late 1800's
the Heywood Brothers Company was producing
a large variety of furniture. Along the way
many
other
furniture concerns had been absorbed, but
the biggest acquisition was Cyrus Wakefield's
Wakefield
Rattan
Company. Initially more of a joint operation,
the 2 firms imaginatively used the name:
The Heywood
Brothers and Wakefield, eventually shortening
that moniker to the pithier Heywood-Wakefield
Co. By
the 1930's, the Heywood-Wakefield Furniture
Co. was very successful, yet still mired
in the past. Heywood-Wakefield knew the
world was ready
for modern furniture, if only someone would
figure out what modern furniture would
look like. Luckily,
the local Kiwanis Club had a stellar group
of designers: Russel Wright, Gilbert Rhode,
W. Joseph
Carr and
the club's Count: Alexis J. Saknoffsky
(a Kiwanis
exchange member from Transylvania). This
progressive group of designers decided
that modern furniture
would be solid birch, steam bent and blonde
enough to shame Jean Harlow.
Christened "The
Heywood-Wakefield Modern Line," this
philosophy was a peroxide epiphany of unprecedented
modern proportion. In this golden age (1936-1966)
America turned blonde, filling all the
best homes with the bubbly boost of birch.
Various lines were
introduced; the very names of which ("Sculptura", "Crescendo", "Kohinoor")
evoke a shimmering time. Aesthetics, beauty
and creativity combined with quality to
create a symphony
of style... Sadly,
even the most beautiful of symphonies must
end, and the Heywood-Wakefield Company
wrote the
last coda for this line in 1966. And
the demanded encore never came-until
now and
until Springdale.
Here
at Springdale we have created a home where
the Heywood-Wakefield symphony
never
ends.
Our virtuoso restorative team performs
note perfect
restoration of the designers' original
score. So at last, true Heywood-Wakefield
devotees
can savor
the sweet music of Heywood-Wakefield's
everlasting encore.
Come
visit. |
