Furniture designer Leonard Eisen is a grab-`em-by-the-eyeballs kind of guy. His Victorian-inspired 221 Baker Street collection for Pulaski Furniture introduced at the International Home Furnishings Market brims with ornate carving, dark wood and the vague feeling of Grandma`s front parlor.
”You have to react emotionally to it in some way,” Eisen said when asked about his designs, named for the address of Victorian detective Sherlock Holmes. ”You walk in. You love it or hate it, but you don`t go `uh-huh.”`
With consumers worried about soldiers in Saudi Arabia, the high price of gas and the state of the American economy, U.S. furniture producers are taking no chances in trying to win the minds of shoppers next spring; they are going directly for their hearts.
”The goal,” said Steve Wilson, vice president of Lexington Furniture,
”is to evoke an emotion in a person that would connect with the past like you remember from your grandmother`s.” Wilson`s company introduced an appealing melange of rustic, woodsy-feel furnishings dubbed the World of Bob Timberlake, for a North Carolina artist.
”It is a very cautious-safe-market,” said Donald Swanson Jr., divisional merchandise manager for Dayton Hudson Department Stores, parent of Marshall Field & Co. ”Everyone is concerned about the economy. . . . We`re struggling with how much we can change.”
Judging by introductions such as Timberlake and Thomasville`s Country Inns and Backroads collection shown during the nine-day trade gathering, which ended Friday, furniture shopping in retail stores next spring is shaping up as one long stroll down memory lane, though the exact period and place is sometimes hard to pinpoint.
Old Country was the name given to a nine-room house full of new furnishings by designer Jena Hall for Broyhill Furniture. The simulated house, minus a kitchen, was set up inside the Broyhill showrooms and showed how pieces from the collection could be used from the front foyer to a little girl`s bedroom.
”This is the European country look,” Hall said of the extensive assortment of wood, painted and upholstered furniture with details reminiscent of England, Italy and France. ”The furnishings are meant to be eclectic. These furnishings are meant for someone who has pieces from their family to mix in.”
If Old Country covered much of Europe, other collections concentrated on the U.S. past. Perhaps prodded by the publicity surrounding the record prices paid for authentic Stickley furniture by entertainers such as Barbra Streisand, there was an explosion of introductions based on Arts and Crafts furnishings and Mission-style furniture. Among those who showed some examples of this theme were the giant Lane Co., a firm shopped by such Chicago retailers such as Homemakers and Spiegel.
Lane introduced Grove Park, based on a North Carolina meeting place for Arts and Crafts enthusiasts, while the country`s oldest family-owned company, Richardson Bros. of Sheboygan Falls, Wis., showed appealing and affordable Missioncraft dining rooms.
There were flashes of other nostalgic periods too, both European and American. CollingWood, a new company offering wood furniture, introduced Dachas, inspired by Russian country houses. Chicago area consumers will see some pieces before the rest of the country does, in Marshall Field`s fall Trend House, which opened last week. Victorian vestiges appeared not only at Pulaski but in Baker Furniture`s revived Milling Road, a line priced a step lower than the top-of-the-line Baker. The original Milling Road appeared before World War II.
Contributing as much to the sense of the nostalgia as the carving, heft and distressing of the wood furnishings were the abundance of tea-stained and dusky colors used in upholstered fabrics. Faded burgundy, old gold, mossy greens in damask patterns and faded-looking print fabrics added to the sense of old wealth and a bygone era.
Bold floral designs in huge bouquets covered sofas, love seats and chairs. One Baker pattern was so large that a single blossom covered half an ottoman. Kilim rug patterns as well as Indian-blanket motifs were popular too, often in combination with color-coordinated stripes.
Among the most popular fabrics for sofas and chairs was a russet-red and moss-green Indian-blanket pattern reminiscent of the fabric Ralph Lauren showed on a sofa in advertisements last year. If this fabric shows up in as many retail stores as manufacturers` showrooms, it could go a long way toward singlehandedly revising the Southwestern look from the desert pale pastels of peach, azure and cream to darker, deeper brick, evergreen and taupe tones.
Florals were not the only motif. Fauna including ducks appeared on some fabrics. Swans carved in wood were a recurring sign of a Victorian mood.
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Home accessories, in general, are vastly more important for spring, not only in creating the proper ambience to sell the nostalgia of the big furniture but to offer budget-pressed consumers something else to buy.
Thomasville unveiled the totally coordinated-wallpaper to knickknacks-Country Inns collection, which the company plans to have retailers showcase as in-store boutiques or free-standing shops along the lines of Laura Ashley. Though there is no guarantee that retailers will buy and show the accessories as carefully as the manufacturer did, Lexington`s Timberlake effort with hand-made quilts, faded flour-sack-look pillows and other decorative items added immensely to the collection`s charm.
Despite the massive dose of memories past, one stunning contemporary counterpoint stood out at Henredon Furniture. Designed by 27-year-old British- born free-lance furniture designer Andrew Gibson, the honey-colored maple furnishings were marked by darker walnut circle inlays, arresting conical hardware and a top that looks like it`s floating.
”The hardware gives it some dimension, and it took almost as long as the furniture to design,” Gibson said of his Imagine group. ”I wanted to repeat the circle motif somehow, and I didn`t want it to say, `I`m a handle pull.`
But I just couldn`t get it right. I spent more than a week on the hardware and finally went home at midnight, turned on the television and the Madonna video came up, and I said, `That`s it` when I saw what she was wearing.”
In addition, Gibson designed what he calls the ”Phantom” sofa for Henredon`s Fireside Sofa Collection. The style is named for the unseen, or phantom, back legs attached near the middle of the back allowing the side of the sofa to appear to swoop to the floor.
The eager Gibson, however, seemed to be one of the few who was working in the present and looking forward as Americans face an uncertain 1991 and, in the longer range, a new century. The explanation for others` pell-mell backward plunge is simple, according to Bill Peterson, editor of the trade publication Furniture Today.
”When times get tough, this is what happens,” he said. ”People go back. It used to be Early American or Colonial styles, but this is the Early American for this generation.”