Henredon Blog

The Holiday Bar Is Open

The holidays mean lots of entertaining. But is your holiday decor ready for a party?

Unless you keep a year-round party bar in your home — and cheers to you if you do! — for the holidays, you'll need a temporary bar that will still be beautiful and useful when the party's over.

Habitually Chic had a great post about creating a bar as part of holiday decorating the other day, with lots of design inspiration.

We're looking at furniture that makes a perfect party bar for the holidays and won't be out of place the rest of the year.

• If you're decorating for year-round parties, invest in a bar cabinet or a wine cellar. But if you're only thinking about one big drinking occasion for the year, a piece that's dedicated to the pleasures of alcohol might not be very practical.

• Serve drinks from a sideboard or buffet with a stone top. No ugly rings on your wooden surfaces if you have a marble or granite surface for your bar. And it will make sense in the dining room all year. A rococo revival buffet from the Natchez collection or an elegant buffet inspired by nineteenth-century English design each make an ideal bar in a formal dining room.

• A console table bar can help bring traffic away from the dining room into the rest of the house. Choose a console table with a stone top or a sofa table with a glass top and you won't have to worry about table clothes or coasters. Or set up the bar on a mirrored console table and your bar will look twice as festive when all the bottles are reflected back.

• An expandable or flip-top table or sideboard is also a great idea. Expand the flip top on a console table for the holiday bar and fold it right back up after the party is over. Or unfold a buffet's flip top in the dining room and then store the bar accessories inside the same buffet the rest of the year.

• Never underestimate the functionality of a tea cart. Set up the bar on a cart and the wheels allow you to relocate the bar whenever you need to. And it works for tea and cookies during the rest of the year or as a side table wherever you need it.

Paula Grace Likes Beautiful Chairs

We just wanted to thank Paula for her mentions of the Henredon chair in her description of the Washington Design Centers' Fall Design House (try saying that three times fast. Paula has a lengthy description complete with fun photos from her time there, and in doing so, noticed a Henredon chair (and a Pearson one to boot).  The photo is about halfway down.

Their distinguished room used neutral tones of gray, brown and ivory ~ I love the palette. The focal point is the vignette of the Amy Howard folding screen mirror, Hine & Co. desk, and beautiful Henredon chair graced by Katherine in this photo. The wallcovering was a remarkable vine pattern from Farrow & Ball. In one corner stood a Pearson chair that looked like one could curl up and read a good book (I would have tried curling up in the chair but the room was filled with Tarleton fans). My friend, Karen, adores the area rug from Galleria Carpets & Rugs. Subtle tones and pattern ~ it is really quite exquisite

And of course, we noticed Paula.

Fragments Of Henredon Online

Occasionally we'll stumble across mentions of Henredon online, stray through from blogs and comments and forums, where people share their thoughts on what the furniture means, and what they find.

One post by a guy named Daddy Rhon on livejournal complains about furniture sold on Craigslist, and those who assume antique means good, but when he gets down to it:

And just because something is antique doesn't mean it is automatically worth twice as much. It's alot of running around and heavy lifting, but I wouldn't mind dealing in used and antique furniture again. Occasionally I will see an old Henredon or Drexel piece on Craigslist and wish I had the space.

We do that too.

Sometimes it's a new voice, like this mom blog who finds an old Henredon piece and hadn't heard of us, but her commenters share a story. 

I don't know much about Henredon, but we do have an armoire that was my in-laws and apparently they paid big bucks for it. It's the one thing our son has that was his grandfather's.

When we read stories like that, it really focuses us on what we'd like this blog to become.  Henredon has a lot of great stories, but so do those customers who have purchased our furniture over the years.  With the help of this blog, we hope to find and publish more of them.