by Nearly 100-piece collection offers about 30 pieces of furniture including living room and dining room
HIGH POINT — When it came time to develop its latest licensed collection, luxury furniture resource Eichholtz had thousands of years of materials to draw from — 5,000 years to be exact.
That’s how much history and art were under roof at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that the product development team at Eichholtz had at its fingertips in creating the nearly 100-piece The Met | Eichholtz Collection. Buyers attending this week’s High Point Market will see those pieces for the first time at the Eichholtz showroom at 129 S. Hamilton St.
The collection offers about 30 pieces of furniture including upholstery, occasional and accent items as well as dining furniture, mirrors and display cabinets. The shelving of the cabinetry, which includes bookcase units and other open display units with wood or metal framing, can be used to display some of the other decorative pieces ranging from jars and hurricane lamps to busts of ancient figures, to name a few.
Some 40 pieces are exact replicas of art at The Met, including horus table lamps, the frames of some mirrors, the busts of Roman and Greek figures, sphinx figures in white marble and granite, and various moon jars and antique vases.
The collection occupies several room settings at market featuring a mix of sofas and matching chairs and occasional tables as well as dining tables and chairs and display cabinets.
Among the key pieces are two dining tables, including a round dining table with a travertine marble top that seats four to six comfortably and a center library dining table in a black finish featuring a display cabinet-inspired base that seats eight to 10. There also are several occasional tables including a round table made with a travertine marble top that is a companion piece to the dining table, and a glass-top Lioness cocktail table and end table with a metal frame and lion’s feet.
The Americana cocktail table and side table have tapered legs and are shown in a black finish that is duplicated on the wood frame of a gallery cabinet featuring glass shelves and sides. A number of occasional and other living room pieces were inspired by the furnishings of old apartments along Fifth Avenue occupied by the Rockefellers and other wealthy families of old New York.
The Metropolitan display cabinet and dresser have architectural design influences inspired by the architecture of buildings in New York. Made with oak veneers, these are in two finishes, a dark Charcoal Gray and a natural oak tone.
The hand-carved Matthias console table has an antique gold finish and a green marble top, while the Acanthus cocktail table in white marble has acanthus leaf carvings around the entire base.
There also are several vintage-inspired upholstery pieces from old New York, including the Belvedere sofa in a copper velvet tone fabric and the Manhattan sofa and chair in a taupe chenille fabric.
The Madison sofa comes in a beige fabric and features thick tassel detail at the base, while the Park dining chairs are shown in beige fabric and a brown mohair fabric. The hand-carved Louis chair in a gold-leaf finish is a direct replica of a chair in the museum.
Early Egyptian motifs are a common theme as seen in wall art, carpets and lamps as well as busts and statues that are exact replicas of pieces in the museum.
“The Met complimented us for taking the execution so seriously,” said Edwin van der Gun, chief creative officer at Eichholtz.
For those wanting to see the inspiration behind the pieces, each item has a QR code on a hangtag that leads to a description of the piece that inspired the item, be it a piece of furniture, lamp or decorative statue.
For Eichholtz, having access to all these historic influences enabled it to create an entire portfolio of designs across multiple categories. In this way, the partnership mirrored its prior efforts in developing other collections that are fully accessorized.
“Because we do total looks, we could also do a total look with The Met and that was really special, to have carpets, to have furniture, to have accessories, to have mirrors, all of these things together,” van der Gun said.
He noted that as Eichholtz sells to more than 100 countries around the world it is already getting requests for the collection from such notables as Harrods in London and Bloomingdale’s in Dubai.
“Everybody knows The Met when they travel to New York to visit this beautiful museum, so we already have gotten requests from places that we didn’t expect to get requests from,” van der Gun said.
And with thousands of years of art and objects to choose from, Eichholtz expects to find inspiration for new pieces that will continue to grow the collection over time.
