CRAFT RENEWING: A Morganton manufacturer excels by giving luxury furniture buyers what they want.

• Author: Ellis, Kevin

Cindy Hoods left hand holds the base of the unfinished dining room chair, while her right hand cradles a small electric sander that glides across its legs. She's been making furniture for 30 years, so she speaks with authority.

"It's time-consuming," says Hood, a craftsperson at Chaddock Furniture Workroom in Morganton, while allowing neither her eyes nor her hands to stray from the smooth maple grain. "So many sides. Everything has to be flush."

One might envision Hood as a lone artisan, working in a shop behind her home in this Burke County foothills town of 18,000 residents. Instead, Hood performs her job in a 150,000-square-foot building, a former Hanes textile factory where dozens of craftspeople are making high-end, made-to-order furniture. Machines aid workers in cutting raw material, while further down the line others apply finish by hand. Elsewhere, workers meticulously hand-tie the springs in a cushioned chair to help guarantee the seat offers "a good ride" for years to come.

A few steps away, Martin Cazares uses a small metal tool to make scratches and dings to distress a maple console, which will then be sanded and have 20 to 25 coats of finish applied, each coating adding character.

These tricks of the trade come from years of experience, not mimicked from a YouTube video or mass produced on a factory floor.

"You almost have to have a lesson in antiquing and how things would age," says Chaddock President Kevin Ward, describing Cazares' work. "We have artisans and craftsmen who work here. It takes a special person to want to do what we do. Someone who will say, 'It's my job to create a beautiful piece of furniture that will last for generations.'"

While the average sofa lasts just six years, the 200 or so employees at Chaddock Furniture Workroom take a different approach. Sustainability in industry, says Chaddock CEO Andrew Crone, can also be defined by making something that will last.

"This is the way it was done 50,60,70 years ago, but we still do it that way because we think that's our customer," he says. "It's the finest homes in America that our products are going to live in, and that's really cool."

Those homes include the most famous one in the nation's capital. After the spring High Point Furniture Market last year, Chaddock Furniture sent a dining room table and a coffee table from its Mark D. Sikes collection to Jill Biden's office in the East Wing of the White House.

AMERICAN COMEBACK

North Carolina's furniture manufacturing tradition has its roots in the 1800s, when Moravian artisans located in present-day Winston-Salem and Quakers in Randolph and Rowan counties created pieces that remain highly coveted by collectors and museums.

In 1890, six North Carolina businesses produced an estimated $159,000 worth of furniture. Ten years later, 44 furniture factories operated in Hickory, High Point, Marion and other towns, reporting $1.5 million in sales, according to a 2020 report by John Mullin, a...