Donghia London Laurent Eight Foot Dining Room Table and Six Henredon Chairs

With distinctive style touches like gray flannel upholstery and overstuffed seating, American designer Angelo Donghia (1935–85) was a visionary leader of bold interior design and furniture in the 1970s and ’80s. Although Donghia lived only to age 50, by the time of his death from AIDS-related pneumonia, his name graced numerous furniture and decor companies, in addition to his own interior designs.

After graduating from Parsons School of Design in 1959, Donghia joined the interiors firm of Yale R. Burge, and his star rose quickly from there. By 1963, he had been appointed vice president and in 1966, partner — a move that came with a name change for the firm to Burge-Donghia Interiors. In 1968, he founded the fabrics and wall coverings company Vice Versa, and in 1978 he founded Donghia Furniture. With this holistic approach, Donghia was able to oversee nearly every element of an interior design project, which, for him, spanned everything from corporate offices (notably PepsiCo’s world headquarters in Purchase, New York) to the Metropolitan Opera Club at Lincoln Center to residential interiors for clients such as Diana Ross and Ralph Lauren.

After he inherited Burge’s firm, he continued to develop its reach as Donghia Associates. He opened a series of showrooms around the country to offer his designs to a wider audience, who loved the company’s marriage of minimal forms with luxe materials. His silver-foil ceilings, mixing of eclectic textile patterns and plush furniture set trends and, through mass marketing, influenced the direction of American interior design.

“I feel that I’ve developed my own style that is as classic and minimal as the ’30s style it reflects,” the designer once told New York magazine. In 2015, the retrospective “Angelo Donghia: Design Superstar” at the New York School of Interior Design chronicled his influence on all facets of modern interiors, from furnishings to wall coverings. It’s an approach that still resonates today. Donghia continued to operate as a company after his death, acquired by the Rubelli Group in 2005. After it filed for bankruptcy in 2020 and closed its showrooms, its name, designs, archives and inventory were acquired by Kravet.

Find authentic Donghia furniture today on 1stDibs.

Founded in 1945, Henredon is one of the more recently minted of the top-tier North Carolina furniture makers. Among collectors, Henredon is admired both for its sleek, sexy sofas, dining tables and other furniture of the 1970s and for its partnerships with noted designers, a program that began in the 1950s with decorating icon Dorothy Draper and architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

From the start, Henredon has been best known for its bedroom furniture and vintage case pieces, such as cabinets, dressers, armoires and credenzas. The brand was established in Morganton by former Drexel Furniture Company executives, and its name is a portmanteau term, derived from the first names of three of the company’s founders — T. Henry Wilson, Ralph Edwards and Don VanNoppen. (Sterling Collett, a fourth figure mentioned in Henredon Furniture’s history, chaired the company and served as treasurer).

Though not on the cutting edge stylistically, Henredon’s production — as well as its output under the Heritage-Henredon label — has always kept pace with contemporary tastes. 

In 1953, High Point manufacturer Heritage began a collaboration with Dorothy Draper, famed for bravura interior design commissions such as the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. Her taste for bold, modernized historical style is reflected in the incised baroque medallions of her España line and the geometric motif of her Viennese furnishings group. In 1955, Henredon launched the Taliesin Ensemble by Wright, named after the architect’s houses in Wisconsin and Arizona. Taliesin dressers and coffee tables are recognizable by their angular shapes and a dentil motif on their edges. In those years, Henredon had a cross-licensing agreement with Heritage, and Draper and Wright's furniture is usually labeled Heritage-Henredon.

In later decades, Henredon produced collections for such designers as Ralph Lauren and Laura Ashley. The company took a stylish turn in the 1970s, fabricating new and unusual forms like mirrored room dividers and console tables with rounded corners and burl-wood veneers. Such pieces are priced in the $3,000 to $4,000 range, as are chests of drawers by Draper. Wright furniture tends toward the higher end, priced around $7,000. Henredon was an aesthetically diverse maker, but its furniture commands attention and makes a statement in any eclectic decor.

The vintage Henredon furniture for sale on 1stDibs includes bedroom furniture, coffee tables, chairs and other pieces.