(continued)
The earliest Streamline Modern marking known is the yellow woodgrain style paper label with red print. This label is frequently found in conjunction with the blue and white style number tag made of paper. These labels were placed on the backs or bottoms of the furniture.
The woodgrain label was replaced by the red and blue paper label, which used white print. The exact date the red and blue paper label was adopted is unknown; estimates range from 1939 to no later than 1942.
There were also special emblems placed inside the top drawers on some of the furniture designed by Leo Jiranek and Count Sakhnoffsky. These emblems were made from metal or plastic and displayed the designer's name.
Below
are the Labels the
Heywood Wakefield Company would use.
This cloth tag was used on upholstered furniture.
The woodgrain label was used until the late 1930's.
This label is usually seen with the woodgrain label.
The red and blue label was used until the Heywood Wakefield eagle trademark was phased in, beginning in 1946.
This paper label advertise the Dupont Dulux finish Heywood Wakefield used for many years.
From
Country Store to Modern Furniture:
100 Years of Progress
As noted by Richard N. Greenwood, the birth of Heywood-Wakefield "Modern" furniture traces its roots back more than a century to five Heywood brothers-Walter, Levi, Seth, Benjamin and William-who in 1826 began making wooden chairs in a small barn in Gardner, Massachusetts. At a time when John Quincy Adams was president of only 24 United States and the country's first railroad tracks were only just beginning to be laid, Walter Heywood began fashioning chairs largely by hand, with his only "machine" being a foot lathe. Walter was soon joined in the chairmaking enterprise by his brothers Levi and Benjamin, who began assisting in the work part-time while running a nearby country store. The brothers' chair business enjoyed quick prosperity and they soon built a new shop across the street from the store, which was disposed of around 1829.
In 1831 Levi Heywood moved to Boston where he established an outlet store to sell the Heywood chairs, while Benjamin and younger brother William remained in Gardner to manufacture the products which gradually evolved from wood-seated to caneseated variations. In 1834 a fire destroyed the Heywood's chair shop (which was not rebuilt), prompting Levi's return to Gardner a year later. To continue chairmaking operations, in 1835 a definitive partnership-B. F. Heywood & Company was formed, initially comprised of Benjamin, Walter and William Heywood, along with Moses Wood and James W. Gates.
Upon his return to Gardner, Levi Heywood again became involved in the chair-making business. And it was Levi Heywood, the oldest of the brothers (and the one who would later achieve fame as an inventor and a patentee of chair-making machinery that revolutionized production), along with younger brother Seth and their descendants, who became the predominant figures in the development of the company in the 19th century. In 1835 Levi Heywood guided the company's move to the shores of Crystal Lake in Gardner (where a company factory would remain until the business closed its doors for good more than 140 years later). The fledgling chair-making enterprise purchased a lake-side building equipped for wood-turning and in the process gained its first "real" machinery-turning lathes and a circular saw. Initially an outlet from Crystal Lake provided the company with plenty of power, but eventually the currents of Crystal Lake proved inadequate to drive Heywood's machines and in succeeding years Levi replaced the plant's water power with steam.
Levi's insistence on the installation of new machinery dismayed his early partners, who gradually withdrew from the chair-making concern and for a period left Levi the sole Heywood owner. By 1844 a second partnership-Heywood & Woodhad been formed, with Levi and Moses Wood the apparent principal partners. By 1849 Wood's name had disappeared from the company's title-Levi Heywood & Company and in 1851 a new name, Heywood Chair Manufacturing Company, was adopted during the formation of what amounted to a joint stock association.
Below
are a pictures of the
Heywood Wakefield Brothers
|
Levi Heywood |
Walter Heywood |
Seth Heywood |
William Heywood |
|
Four of the five Heywood Brothers. No known photograph of Benjamin E. Heywood exist. Family tradition had it that he was an extremely homely man, and would never agree to have his picture taken. |
|
