It's time for another furniture history deep dive! This week I wanted to share with you a company that is still in existence today!
In this week's drop we are featuring a beautiful, floating top desk made by Hooker Furniture in the 1960s.
History
Hooker Furniture began in the 1920s, with factories located in southern Virginia and North Carolina, similar to companies like Broyhill, Kent Coffey and Lane. This region offered furniture makers a supply of lumber for furniture manufacturing.
The founder, Clyde Hooker, actually was married to the daughter of the Bassett furniture company founder! He started out working for the Bassett company and at first when he started his company it was called Hooker-Bassett, because of investors and influence from the Bassett family. According to the founder's son, J. Clyde Hooker, Jr., the company separated itself and was renamed Hooker Furniture Corporation around 1950 - 1951.
Founder Clyde Hooker - Photo Credit: Hooker Furniture Blog
Reading the founder's son's interview was interesting, as it seems that the Bassett family was very influential in the region and connected with other furniture makers.
Clyde Hooker, Jr. was president of the company from the 60s until the early 2000s. The company was known for their high quality furniture, including larger pieces for sprawling suburban homes in post-war America.
The company began to specialize in imported furniture in the late 1980s, in order to cut costs by utilizing cheaper labor costs. This seems to have contributed to their survival in the furniture industry to this day.
Mid Century Modern Designs
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to dig up much info about who designed the Mainline by Hooker furniture, which seems to encompass a lot of their mid century modern furniture offerings. The Mainline designs were an American interpretation of Danish designs of the time (i.e. floating top desks).
A desk that sold in a previous drop
If you happen to come across this deep dive post and have some information, like ads for Mainline by Hooker furniture or information about the designers, we would love to hear from you!