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5.0 out of 5 stars
How & Why This Book Is Relevant In Today's Furniture Market,
By Adam G Thomson (Canton, NC United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Anvil of adversity; biography of a furniture pioneer
"Anvil Of Adversity" is well written and is especially relevant in today's 2003 current furniture market and hard times for any USA manufacturer. The historic lesson to be learned from the manufacturing past of Broyhill's assembly line furniture production is that when times are economically hard like he experienced during the great depression, then was the best time to cut your workforce to the bearest of minimiums and to lower your price point to be able to outlast the toughest of times. One might wonder why Jacque Rhulmann's line of furniture failed to survive the depression. If he had been humble enough have followed Broyhill's example he and his design firm might have made it through the depression. Of course, World War II happening in Europe after the depression was also another reason their firm went under. Plus Rhulmann's advancing age. But I digress.What is important in these current hard times for American manufacturers is that there are current and past manufacturers who we can take other lessons from. The firm of Ikea and the way he used foreign Eastern Block labor to establish a foothold in the furniture markets worldwide is a similiar to what the Chinese are doing now. Perhaps one of the most relevant recent sets of articles that were published on the current state of the market was written by Schmidt in Modern Woodworking this past summer of 2003. In it Schmidt explains how the USA furniture design market is "stuck" in a mold of non-innovative furniture designs that they have been repeating for the past 20 to 50 years. Our country's furniture manufacturers unwillingness to break out of their (current) older furniture designs and manufacturing techniques have been one of our biggest unrealized problems to date. There are newer design and manufacturing techniques that have been untried and as of yet undiscovered. There are going to be evolving styles and techniques, that I believe will surpass those of former furniture makers and giants of the past. Certain unused and some yet undiscovered materials will be created and cause certain formerly rejected furniture designs to be reevaluated, making possible, perhaps their reintroduction of formerly unuseable furniture and product designs. There are currently in use some pieces of manufacturing machinery that have never been used to their fullest capabilities. Dovetailing the use of these machines with these readapted manufacturing techniques might well create a whole new vista of creativity in the designs of what were formerly considered "standard pieces of furniture". Why must a chair always remain a chair? Why must a case good exist in a certain range of measurments, to meet certain functional needs. Why must it always be limited to those and only those functional needs? In the same way that Broyhill took the mass produced assembly line construction techniques of Henry Ford and readapt it to furniture building, so might we now use the strengths of various cultures to discover newer more innovative furniture designs and uses that have hitherto not been discovered. I will leave this conjecture to the reader to explore. Change is coming to the world of furniture design and manufacturing in ways we can only imagine at this point, but it will come. I liked this book because it showed how Broyhill adapted with the times, the technologies, the economics of the times and how we must remember to do so now. It showed how by holding on, persevering, and using new techniques to "think outside of the box" he and his furniture empire was created and survives today. Anyone wishing to further discuss this book and these ideas is encouraged to email me at www.adamthomson@charter.net . I'm looking forward to hearing from others about this book, this review and its concepts. Until then I remain Adam Thomson, Oct. 11th, 2003
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