Artistry and Practicality Meet At Home Furnishings Market.

No matter what the inspiration, the collections showed that furniture makers can combine beauty and artistry in furniture that people will not only buy and use, but enjoy.

WHILE COMPANIES exhibiting at April's International Home Furnishings Market in High Point, NC, drew inspiration from the past, the future and a variety of cultures, many relied heavily on wood itself for their designs.

Many pieces made the most of the patterns inherent in wood, choosing unusual grains and matching veneers to get the maximum play of light across the surface.

In a literally shining example, Century Furniture slip-matched clustered maple veneer, a less tightly formed pattern than burl, in an otherwise unadorned, 90-inch-tall entertainment armoire. In a dining table from the same Omni Collection, the veneer is block-matched. The pieces in the collection are finished in a deep gloss, with light and medium-dark finishes offered.

In other collections introduced at High Point, April 6-13, designers put veneers together in sunburst, checkerboard, chevron and butterfly patterns. Woods ranged from light ash to macassar ebony, with most finishes in a warm, medium-brown range.

Henredon uses radial matched rosewood as the top and cast brass as the base in a cocktail table in its H Collection.

In Hammary's Maison cocktail table, cherry veneer is matched in a butterfly pattern, then finished in antique cherry.

Dining chairs in Century's Omni Collection are each made of four blocks of clustered maple veneer that are book-and butt-matched.

Exotic Ebony

Designers used macassar ebony, with its distinctive dark stripe, to lend an exotic feel to pieces ranging from contemporary to adaptations of historic designs.

Designing for Hickory Chair, home designer William Poole uses a tropical wood veneer in a sunburst pattern in a 36-inch Memory Table in his signature collection.

Baker Furniture uses ebony, along with a banding of myrtle burl veneer and a cross-banding of pau ferro veneers, in a set of nesting tables in its Stately Homes Collection. The company also uses it inlaid with satin wood laurel wreaths in a table in Stately Homes, a collection patterned after furnishings in British castles and estates.

Meanwhile, Broyhill's City Dwellers set, part of its three-part Village Tapestries Collection, uses selected hardwoods with a cherry finish to present a bedroom with a turn-of-the-century flavor. Banded oval veneer panels dominated a large armoire. Veneers in a bed's headboard and footboard are matched in a chevron design.

The three Village Tapestries segments are meant to be reminiscent of village life, city life and seacoast living in the U.S. in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Designs in the Village Craftsmen segment mimic joinery methods of the time, with simulated dovetail and tenon-and-peg details.

The Coastal Neighbors pieces are sturdier and rough-hewn, with details borrowed from shipbuilding. Pieces can be used interchangeably between the three "traditions," Broyhill says.

Marked By Marquetry 

Marquetry decorated several manufacturer's pieces patterned after European furniture. An alderwood chest shown by Baker in its Stately Homes Collection has a top inlaid with yew wood, and its front and sides are decorated with a classical urn inlay and floral scrolls.

Henredon's Natchez Collection, created under a licensing agreement with the Historic Natchez Foundation, includes a chest patterned after an 18the century marquetry demilune, with inlays of rosewood, walnut burl and harewood.

Although marquetry gave several specialty pieces a highly decorated look, wood finishes in general were subtle, seeking a middle ground between the extremes of gloss and distressing exhibited by Century's Omni collection and Broyhill's Coastal Neighbors collection. Omni was offered with a deep, glossy finish in both dark and light maple, while the pine in Broyhill's Coastal Neighbors was heavily distressed, in keeping with an imagined hardy, seaside existence.

More often, finishes were described as "slightly distressed and burnished," (Broyhill's Village Craftsmen) or "low sheen" (Stanley Furniture Co.'s clean-lined, Arts and Crafts-inspired Canyon Loft collection in oak solids and veneers.)

In paint finishes, an antique white was a choice in some selected pieces and collections. Baker used a slightly distressed white with dark undertones in its French Collection.

Sligh Furniture's internationally flavored Ellis Line of home office furniture included an elaborate computer armoire in a choice of paints: antique-white Provence or medium-brown Gentry.

An Islands Air

Standard Furniture's Grand Design line of imported furniture introduced its Havana Collection of bedroom, dining room and occasional furniture in crackled antique white. The padded cane inserts in the Havana Collection -- as in the dark-finished Antigua Collection that preceded it -- hint at the Caribbean theme.

Ashley Furniture's Millennium division uses layered shades of transparent black to help it convey an entirely different theme: the next 1,000 years. The Millennia 2000 bedroom blends classic architectural elements, such as pediments and columns, in a highly contemporary design.

Hand-painting brings back the past and creates an imaginary landscape in several pieces. Thomasville Furniture Industries, continuing to add to its Ernest Hemingway Collection -- which has had sales in excess of $100 million -- added the Cardinal-Lemoine Armoire and the L'Etoile Bar to its Hemingway's Paris Collection. Antique painted panels decorate the entertainment armoire, named for a Paris street on which Hemingway lived. A hand-painted street scene decorates the bar.

The Kathy Ireland Home Collection for Vanguard Furniture floats pastel-hued hot-air balloons in a puffy, hand-painted sky on a children's chest.

Less fanciful, but still imaginative, is the use of color in children's furniture in Lea Industries' Natural Elements Collection. In addition to a natural finish on the hard maple, Lea is offering a choice of subtle stains -- linen, sage, indigo and charcoal -- that allow the grain of the wood to show through.

Second Time Around

Just as popular finishes like distressing were "softened" or "lightened" at the High Point market, some long-appreciated furniture styles also underwent minor transformation.

The clean-lined Mission and Arts and Crafts styles gained new interpretations, including Thomasville's Mission Arts, a 24-piece collection for living room, dining room, bedroom and office.

Rattan, bamboo and other woven materials contribute to an exotic islands feel in the Tommy Bahama Collection from Lexington, the Mandarin Bay Collection from Laneventure and a St. Croix group from Pilliod. Curving lines in a rattan and oak-veneer bed give Bernhardt Furniture's Caneel Bay a relaxed look.

Function and Practicality

Style aside, the spring market showed a heavy emphasis on function and practicality.

Much of the youth furniture presented by Lea and Stanley could easily be used as second-bedroom or beach-home furniture for adults. Lea's Natural Elements, according to product development vice president James Millner, not only offers a twin, full and queen bed, but also a king bed. Stanley's YA Colors has twin, full and queen sizes.

Standard plays to children's hobbies and interests with its Kids Play Station (entertainment center) and Kids Studio (computer and storage area). Lexington Home Brands, formerly Lexington Furniture Industries, includes a hobby table and trophy case in its rustic Camp Hickory collection for boys, introduced along with its new Lauryn Olivia collection for 8- to 12-year-old girls.

Home offices received a lot of attention from manufacturers and buyers, with ever-greater convenience the overriding theme.

Stanley is making home-office pieces as part of eight collections, including the just-introduced Arts and Crafts-inspired Canyon Loft. Pieces can conceivably be used as part of the office, or used in another room of the house.

Hooker introduced a small, 55-inch-long computer desk. The center drawer opens to reveal a keyboard but the desk is sized and otherwise designed like a home desk from the pre-computer era. It is designed for use by students and members of the family who don't need a full-sized office.

Wanted: Work Space

Sligh tries to give computer users maximum work space with its "V" desk. At the point where an L-shaped desk comes together, a corner section retracts to accommodate a lifted-in-place keyboard. The user gains workspace on either side, and the L-shaped desk can be positioned in any direction since all sides are finished.

The pieces are part of Sligh's Arts and Crafts-inspired collection.

Several companies, Hooker and Sligh among them, are offering "lawyer's bookcases" or "barrister's bookcases" that put books or resource materials at the users fingertips with a lift of a glass-paneled door. Sligh's bookcases are part of its Arts and Crafts group, with seeded-glass panels, lead-like mullions, and old-fashioned metal drawer pulls and cabinet knobs.

An eclectic, unrelated set of home office pieces designed by Sligh, but made abroad, are high-end and distinctive in design. They make use of traditional craftsmanship, such as hand-tooled leather and hand-carved wood, yet offer modem conveniences like overhead lighting that flicks on when pulled from a computer armoire. It is called the Ellis Line for Ellis Island, drawing attention to the international influences at work.

Overall, design influences at the April show were as wide-ranging as the show itself, which included showrooms in Thomasville as well as various High Point sites. The wealth of furniture tradition guarantees that designers these days have no shortage of ideas to draw on-and furniture designs licensed by designers in other fields have become a hot trend.

No matter what the inspiration, the collections showed that furniture makers in this electronic age grapple with the same challenge as their predecessors: combining beauty and artistry in furniture that people will not only buy and use, but enjoy.

American Cherry & Red Oak Most Popular

AMERICAN CHERRY continues to be the wood of choice for bedroom and dining room case goods, according to a semiannual survey of furniture showrooms in High Point, NC, sponsored by three wood associations. Red oak finished second in the bedroom and dining room category, and first in the survey's category for wall units, large entertainment centers and home computer stations.

The survey, conducted during the Spring International Home Furnishings Market, April 6-14, identified that real wood was used for the surface of 89% of the 4,187 case goods that were inspected. Decorative overlays were used in about 7% of the furnishings surveyed by the American Walnut Manufacturers Assn., Appalachian Hardwood Manufacturers Inc. and the Hardwood Plywood & Veneer Assn.

The surveying crews quoted many furniture manufacturing representatives as saying, "It was a great show, perhaps the best ever." They also noted that furniture manufacturers said they are expecting business to be good the remainder of 2000.