From a small Swiss shopfitting business, Vitra has grown into an international design company making furniture for homes, offices and public spaces. Its defining character comes from long-running collaborations with designers including Ray and Charles Eames, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Verner Panton, which have helped shape contemporary design and architecture. Vitra also maintains a strong focus on material research, repair and circular use, generally manufacturing products to order while offering selected bestsellers from stock.
ThonetThonet has been shaping bentwood furniture since Michael Thonet began experimenting with the process in 1830, and today it designs and manufactures commercial furniture in the United States. Its American production began in Statesville, North Carolina, in 1941, and the company now hand-builds contemporary designs alongside enduring bent plywood pieces in its U.S. workshops. The company’s work carries a distinctive design lineage that includes collaborations with architects such as Otto Wagner, Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.MORRISTOWN, NY
SeitzBorn in the Alps and led by designers Kevin Seitz and Rob van Wyen, Seitz makes pared-back furniture shaped by Swiss craft and a slower approach to living. The studio works from a former 1910 babka factory in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, while its workshop in Muotathal produces furniture that qualifies for the Swiss Made label. Its collection is designed with honest materials and lasting use in mind.BROOKLYN, NY
Herman Miller, IncHerman Miller is a Zeeland, Michigan, company whose modern design identity took shape after D.J. De Pree renamed Michigan Star Furniture Company in 1923 for his father-in-law, Herman Miller. Designers including George Nelson and Charles and Ray Eames later helped establish its enduring reputation for problem-solving furniture. Today, the company creates furnishings for workplaces, homes, and healthcare settings as part of the MillerKnoll collective.NEW YORK, NY
VOLK FurnitureFrom a Brooklyn Navy Yard cabinet shop to a Red Hook studio, VOLK Furniture creates contemporary furnishings and objects shaped by simplicity, playful utility, and careful craft. Owner and designer Brian Volk-Zimmerman launched the studio’s first collection in 2012, drawing on a family furniture-making tradition that reaches back to his great-great-great-great grandfather, John Volk. Each piece is intended as a timeless object valued for generations.BROOOKLYN, NY