GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. Nov. 1, 2007 – Kindel Furniture Co. manufactured and delivered this week a custom-designed, 23-foot-long mahogany table that is scheduled to be used at a historic meeting between President George Bush and French president Nicholas Sarkozy at Mount Vernon on Nov. 7.
Kindel donated the one-of-a-kind Duncan Phyfe-style table to Mount Vernon in Virginia, the ancestral home of George Washington, as a way to support the mission of the estate as it celebrates the fine furniture of America’s colonial period. Kindel craftsmen spent about three months to design and engineer, obtain specific materials such as flitches of choice mahogany, and manufacture the table valued at $30,000 with Kindel’s 24-step, hand-rubbed finishing process.
Photo from the November 7 meeting
“Mount Vernon asked for our assistance in creating a meeting table for visiting dignitaries that was a worthy complement to the estate’s other furniture,” Kindel President Jonathan Smith said. “The project took on an even more significance when we were told by Mount Vernon that it is scheduled to be used as the meeting table for President Bush and French president Sarkozy.
“Because our furniture is so labor intensive, literally 100 of our employees can say they worked on a table that was fit for our President.”
Known for its authentic reproductions and historically based designs of the 18th and 19th centuries, Kindel Furniture produces furniture based on designs from a licensed program with Mount Vernon.
Kindel sent the table via one of its dedicated trucks on Tuesday directly to Mount Vernon, just south of the U.S. capital. White House staff has emphasized the fact that the first personal meeting between the presidents will be held at Mount Vernon to highlight the “deep historic bonds” forged between France and the American colonies during the Revolutionary War.
Established in 1901, Kindel Furniture employs more than 130 people including hand carvers, decorators and other skilled craftsmen at its 170,000-square-foot factory and headquarters in Grand Rapids. The company recently signed a contract with Sala Azabu, one of the largest retailers of high-end furniture in Japan, to sell Kindel furniture in that country. Kindel Furniture also recently re-established a relationship with Robert Allen|Beacon Hill, which will display Kindel furniture in showrooms in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Houston, Washington D.C. , Philadelphia, Dallas, Dania Beach, Fla., Westbury, N.Y. and Troy, Mich.
The company also has launched a program called ReNew that refurbishes older pieces of Kindel furniture using many of the same time-honored techniques at the same Grand Rapids location as when they were first manufactured.
Kindel Furniture has exclusive rights to reproduce the furniture for The Winterthur Museum, which is the estate of Henry Francis du Pont in Winterthur, Del., and the premier museum of decorative arts in the nation. The company also manufactures original designs from the legendary interior designer, Dorothy Draper.
For more information about the release, please contact Matthew Gryczan at Seyferth Spaulding Tennyson Inc. at gryczan@seyferthpr.com or phone (616) 776-3511.