The History of White Furniture Company (Mebane, NC)

North Carolina Furniture Manufacturers

For this installment of our blog series on North Carolina furniture manufacturers, Mumford Restoration is focusing on Mebane, North Carolina’s White Furniture Company. 

For over 100 years, White Furniture Company operated under the same family and consistently demonstrated the respect it had for its craftspeople. 

Mumford Restoration, a family business, shares those same values and knows how valuable (and successful) they make a company when it comes to furniture restoration. 

It’s important to know that your artisans are consummate craftspeople and to trust them to make the best possible furniture. And White certainly accomplished that. And so does Mumford! 

We hope you’ll enjoy learning about White Furniture Company, from its first leap of faith in 1881 to its transformation into the Hickory White Furniture Company in the 1980s. 

From its insistence on quality to the value it placed on its artisans, we think it’s certainly a company North Carolinians should be proud of!

Above: An October 1940 photo of the White Furniture Company.

The Origin of the White Furniture Company

The White Furniture Company was born in Mebane, NC in 1881.

Earlier that year, brothers William E. White and David A.White left their jobs as telegraphers for the Richmond and Danville Railroad and pooled their $275 in savings ($8,700 in 2025) to open the company. They started the company with nothing more than a second-hand planer and a carload of lumber.

Their brother Sam White joined the company in 1896.

The White Furniture Company was one of the earliest furniture- producing firms in North Carolina, which by 1890, had only 6 such firms. 

Thanks to low labor costs and proximity to forests, North Carolina craftspeople realized that they had a chance against the larger producers of the Northeast.

White Furniture Company became the White-Rickel Furniture company in 1896 when Ohio investor A.J. Rickel joined the company, but it reverted to its original name in 1889 after Rickel sold his interest. 

The brothers initially had a wide-ranging business and contracted out their construction services in addition to producing window sashes and doors. By 1896, they had added furniture manufacturing to their business model and employed 32 craftspeople. 

Above, 1st Photo: The Grove Park Inn, circa 1915.

Above, 2nd Photo: An original White Furniture Company bedroom suit in the Grove Park Inn. 

Twentieth Century Opportunities

The company steadily expanded and gained national attention and contracts. In 1906, White Furniture Company sold 60 car loads of their furniture to furnish the homes and offices of Panama Canal builders. 

By the following year, the firm employed 150 people.

White Furniture became one of the preferred suppliers of bedroom suites and offered “a bedroom suite consisting of a bed, dresser, and washstand for $9” ($321 in 2025).

Hotels, hospitals, and other institutions became White Furniture’s primary clientele at the time. 

Notably, the Grove Park Inn, a luxurious Asheville hotel, outfitted many of their rooms with White Furniture pieces in 1911. 

For the first half of the 20th century, White Furniture’s dining room suites and bedroom suites tended to be reproductions and modifications of Louis XIII and Louis XVI patterns, and Hepplewhite, Sheraton and Chippendale designs furniture made in France and England during the l7th and l8th centuries. 

In 1920, White Furniture began to use lacquer finishes, which was a new material at the time. 

Unfortunately on December 21, 1923 sawdust explosion destroyed most of the White Furniture Company plant,which was a wood-frame building. The flames had been pulled into the air ducts and raced through the building. Within hours, there was nothing left. 

In spite of the disaster, the brothers paid all employees a Christmas bonus and promised to rehire them when the faculty was rebuilt. Whine Furniture Company partnered with their lacquer supplier DuPont to fast track the rebuilding effort.

The new manufacturing buildings, fire-resistant brick structures this time, opened in July 1924 with expanded facilities that could accommodate 350 workers, 110 more than it could employ the previous year.

All employees were tracked down and rehired. When the brothers could not locate a former employee, they tracked him to Virginia, where he had gone to find work. They then wired him money so that he could return to his job.

During the Great Depression, White Furniture was forced to borrow heavily and cut back on production. 

Southern Railroad Ties magazine, in a 1961 article that explored White Furniture’s history, noted: 

What [White Furniture Company] did not do was cut back on its quality; nor did it cut back on the wages it paid its employees. Indeed, company officials sliced away at their own salaries until the highest paid among them was taking home little more than "day wages.

In 1940 White Furniture bought out the Orange Furniture Craftsmen Company at Hillsboro. Throughout 1940, White began to expand and improve the new facility.  This was excellent timing, as the U.S. entered WWII a year later and the company shifted 80% of its production to producing beds, footlockers, tool cribs, sheds, and other wooden items for the war effort. Over the course of the war, it produced 50,000 beds for the Army and staggering amounts of furniture for military use on liberty ships, in nurses quarters, etc. 

By the end of  World War II, White Furniture had added 40,000 square feet of floor space to the Hillsborough structure alone.

Above: 1932 Vogue Magazine Ads for White Furniture Company's Hollywood Ensembles line,

which was endorsed by movie stars of the time, such as Jean Harlow and June Collyer.
 

White Furniture Company and Post-War Operations

After the war, White Furniture expanded into residential design. Its collections of bedroom and dining room furniture featured in numerous home design magazines of the era. Most of the company’s post-war furniture was of contemporary design, but some collections still reflected  l8th century French, English and Italian influences.

According to Southern Railway Ties, by 1961, White Furniture employed 462 employees, 229 of whom had been with the company for more than 10 years. This retention rate was credited to White Furniture’s profit sharing plan. In this plan 25% of the company's earnings (before federal taxes of 52 % and state taxes of 8% have been deducted) is distributed among employees at Christmas-time.

In 1969, Sam White, the last of the White brothers, retired. His son Steven Alexander White, became president of White Furniture Company.

By the mid-1970s, White Furniture employed approximately 500 people and continued to be a major employer in the Mebane area.

Below: Two 1940s advertisements for White Furniture Company in House and Garden Magazine. 

Big Changes for White Furniture Company

In 1985, after 104 years of family ownership, White Furniture Company was purchased by  the Hickory Manufacturing Company and became Hickory-White Furniture Company.

By the early 1990s, a recession had to reduce the demand for high-quality furniture.

Many furniture manufacturers were struggling and ultimately closing their doors.

In a 1994 history interview a long-time employee of White Furniture, recalls, “Hickory took over and started bringing in management from different companies with different ideas and different opinions, and the economy was kind of weak, too. You could put it all together and you could halfway see the writing on the wall”

Above: A 1954 White Furniture Company ad

In December 1993, Mebane employees were given 60-days off notice.

Hickory-White had made the decision to operate only in Hickory.

By early Spring 1994, the Mebane plant had ceased operations and closed.

In 1997, Sherrill Furniture Co. purchased Hickory-White, which continues to operate under the Hickory White name.

Above: A 1962 advertisement for White  Furniture Company's Whiteleigh bedroom furniture collection.

Mumford: The Name in Heirloom Furniture Restoration

Mumford Restoration hasn’t spent 104 years under the same family, but we’re off to a great start!

Since our founding in 1982, we have been continually owned and operated by one family: the Mumfords. 

Bernard Mumford was a young mason when he began his journey into the furniture restoration world and learned from some of the best furniture restorers and refinishers in the business.

He has passed his skills and knowledge down to his children, who still work at Mumford today! 

So, when you bring your heirloom quality furniture to us, you know it's in safe hands.

We can identify the wood, style, and construction methods and tell you the best refinishing and repair methods for each piece. 

We’ve been North Carolina’s premiere furniture restorer and refinisher for decades.

From antiques, heirlooms, collectables, and fine modern furniture, we’ve done it all to rave reviews.

If you have a cherished piece that needs repairs and restoration, trust Mumford!

Above: A 1981 hundredth-anniversary advertisement for White Furniture Company.

Left: Mumford is proud to have been a family owned, independent business since 1982!