February 10, 2007

Part I: ITMA Industry Tours; High Point, NC is the furniture capital of the world?

Home interior textile enthusiasts, where are you? I had just attended “Fabric: From Concept to Consumer” which was a three day excursion to High Point, North Carolina and sponsored by ITMA (International Textile Market Association). This organization’s education committee sponsors this trip once a year for a selected 30 or so students and faculty from universities and colleges from across the USA. Where the h%$# is High Point, North Carolina? It is practically in the middle of no where and the trip’s organizers kept saying it is the furniture capital of the world. I was like, “Here? Seriously?” I don’t know if that is a fact but when we were driving through High Point, there were tons of furniture and home interior design textile showrooms/store fronts and factories as far as the eye can see. It also is home to the World’s Largest Chest of Drawers. Anyway, getting back to what the trip was all about…. High Point, North Carolina is really a gem in the USA in a sense of being one of the last places where from actual weaving and production of home interior textiles to the production of furniture is all done here. If you’re not in the 411, all that work has gone over seas mainly to China because of competitively low wages and production costs. With in the past years, some textile mills were forced to shut down or merge with existing ones because of this. We were given tours of some textile mills/ furniture factories and fabric showrooms. The following is a picture of a fabric being woven on an air-jet loom that was taken at Valdese Weavers. North_Car[1]._011.jpg

We also visited Wesley Mancini (in-house textile designer) located in Charlotte, North Carolina. He is one of the last places that actually hand paints artwork for textile prints and we were allowed to go into the studio and watch the artists at work. (VERY COOL!) He also showed us his "library" where he has many vintage prints, many he had mentioned picking up at Paris flea markets. The following picture is of him showing us a vintage Victorian print carefully stored in special plastic films. North_Car[1]._012.jpg He also gave us a showing, as if we were one of his clients and there was a specific order he showed us his fabrics to give the aesthetic impression of the colors and designs having connections and flowing into each other. Just a note: These textile mills mainly produced jacquard woven fabric for the home interior, furniture and upholstery markets. Rarely anything printed is manufactured in High Point, some students asked about Home Bedding textile design and they said to look to NYC. Also many used a program similiar to NedGraphics which was by EAT. Also the last night of the trip, we had portfolio night where students brought their portfolios and some of the professionals came to look them over and gave advice and suggestions. I brought mine and felt out of place because 99% of the fabrics I designed was print design and for fashion; however it was great to see the other student's work and hear what professionals had advised them. Many of the students were fiber design students and the majority were from SCAD. Overall it was a very eye-opening experience and my biggest thrill was seeing the fabric being woven right in front of my eyes however huge floral patterns and weave patterning don't wip me into a designing frenzy. I would highly recommend attending this industry tour if you think you want to pursue a career in designing textiles for home interior, furnishing and upholstery fabrics. If you are interested in attending next year's tour, contact Professor Elaine Polvinen. Here is a list of venues I had visited and industry contacts that may be one of your possible future employers----> Download file Other links of venues I visited: Pearson, TieTex, Microfibres, and Swaim.

Posted by Victoria at 01:17 PM |

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Comments

Can you order me one of them rugs with the circle thingies?

Posted by: Aunt Debbie [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 13, 2007 11:21 AM

The amount of work that goes into the designs of the rugs is amazing even if they are woven by machine the colorful designs are really good.

Posted by: gmarcell [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 2, 2008 10:27 AM

I would like to learn more of the type of fabrics produced especially for bedding

Posted by: zafer [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 3, 2008 01:14 PM

Never knew that high point, NC is the capital of furniture. Working in the furniture industry for the past 3 years and most of our manufactures are from NJ, IL, and ATL. I do know that every year there is a major furniture show in High Point.

Posted by: Platform Beds [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 26, 2008 06:49 PM

As a former upholstery cleaner I wish I could have been there to see the mill and met the owner. It looks fascination and I bet he is full of information and incredible stories.

To see some of the textiles would have been amazing…especially the ones covered in some of the plastic protection plastic you mentioned.

I quite often hear stories and get emails from people who’ve read my non profit resource web site about hiring upholstery cleaners. I wish some of these cleaners would take the time and truly be interested in their profession rather than just out to take the consumer for a ride.

For a little more information about me and my free resource site please feel welcome to take a look at http://www.carpetcleaningconsumerguide.com.au/Upholstery_Cleaning_Sydney

Thank you kindly,

Mark Briody

Posted by: Mark The Upholstery Cleaning Advisor [TypeKey Profile Page] at June 12, 2008 09:34 AM

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