Old Hickory One-Drawer Stand
Every so often we still acquire a piece of hickory furniture that we had seen pictured in vintage catalogs, but had yet to find on the market. This little stand had caught our eye in the 1935 Old Hickory Furniture Company catalog because it is one of just a few Old Hickory end and side table designs that included a drawer. We are pleased to finally have an example of this particular form (now sold).
This stand was produced within a special series of furniture introduced in 1935 that mixed hickory pole frames with distressed pine which, as the catalog relates, “lends its mellow charm to most cases and tables.” To increase the pine’s mellow surface character, workers at the Old Hickory factory distressed (or “antiqued”) the soft wood using chains and nails to impart the impression of a history of use.
The physical design of the pine and hickory furniture series also had a historical character, reflecting consumers’ interest in Colonial revival forms during the 1930s. An entertaining sales pitch and aesthetic rationale for these designs was spelled out in the introduction to the 1935 Old Hickory catalog:
The files of Early Americana and a wide observation in the peasant districts of Europe have afforded many inspirations for the quaint, authentic and ‘true to type’ patterns shown in Old Hickory’s new groupings of rustic furniture…The details of a century-gone craftsmanship, the homely old materials, rope, leather, pine, square-headed nails, have all been faithfully used...There is, in these new patterns, relief from the jangle of cities and the standardized forms of today so wearisome to nerves and eyes. They carry you back to wind-swept prairies, deep primeval forests, and last and best of all, the men and women who faced this wilderness, axe in hand, with which to new a home.
Some of the designs introduced in the 1935 Old Hickory catalog do imitate true colonial furniture that was built by 17th and 18th century American settlers in New England. This hutch (historically called a dresser) for example, pictured on page 28 of the catalog, is modeled after 17th and 18th century American dressers that had open shelves above and drawers and doors below.
From "The Pine Furniture of Early New England" by Russell Hawes Kettell, 1956
But other furniture pieces that Old Hickory introduced in the 1930s were purely their own design concoctions, inspired by the rough-hewn pioneer styles of America’s frontier cabins in the early to mid-19th century decades of westward expansion. This stand is one of those forms.
It is listed in the 1935 catalog as “#5133 Drawer Stand with antiqued pine top” and is shown among a collection of similarly styled furniture forming a complete bedroom ensemble that included mirrors, dressers, a bed, a desk and lamps.
With an 11” square top (the base size is 14" wide x 15" deep) and at 25 1/4" high, the Drawer Stand is petite and low, perhaps scaled to a size that Old Hickory’s designers imagined was appropriate for pioneer cabins. But in today’s homes it serves well beside modern beds with low-profile box springs, as well as alongside Asian-style platform beds.
The top and drawer case are made of pine, while the back support pole, triangular braces and half-round front base are hickory.
Even the 1935 catalog dedicated many of its pages to the timeless Old Hickory designs that we are most familiar with – woven rattan cane chairs, rockers, settees, footstools, gliders and porch swings, as well as dining and occasional tables with oak tops. Those styles remained fairly consistent from the start of Old Hickory Furniture Company in Martinsville, Indiana in the late 1890s through the 1950s. While the pine and hickory series of the 1930s was not produced for as many years (which explains why the pieces are more rare on the market today), their designs continue to stand out as one variation on classic rustic cool.
"Whatever is new, is bad," the Colonial revivalist and nostalgic trend setter Wallace Nutting opined in 1925. As antiques dealers, we second that sentiment, and understand Old Hickory Furniture Company’s quest to offer old-time craftsmanship and historic designs to its customers in the 1930s.
