While most of the great old names from the past went out of business long ago, this has not stopped other companies from buying up those names and affixing labels bearing those names to new furniture which you can buy today.
This practice is all perfectly legal, of course. But the new furniture associated with the old names is for the most part vastly inferior to the hand made custom mahogany of the past. To save money, the new furniture is mostly made outside of the United States and is largely machine made with hand work kept to an absolute bare minimum. In addition, the new furniture using the old names is typically built over secondary wood frames comprised of particle board or medium density fiber board (MDF). While dimensionally stable, this type of construction is inherently less durable than the superior solid mahogany or oak secondary construction used in the past. Moreover, once damaged, a particle board or MDF frame cannot be satisfactorily repaired. In short, there are almost no companies making fine furniture in the United States today and virtually none of the brand name furniture being made today can hold a candle to the "custom mahogany" furniture that was being made in the 1920s through the 1950s.
Putting aside the issue of the quality of today's new furniture as compared to the custom mahogany of the past, there is the issue of price. Much of the new furniture today is phenomenally expensive as compared to a pre-owned custom mahogany piece. To be sure, it is the buyer's right to pay a premium for the privilege of being the first to own a new piece of furniture. But unlike with electronics and cars, where the new generally have better features and increased safety as compared to the old, there is no comparable advantage to buying new furniture. Indeed, buying a new piece of furniture amounts to little more than paying for the privilege of being the first one to put a scratch in it, thereby turning it into used furniture!
For all these reasons, pre-owned custom mahogany furniture is simply a better product at a better price than the newly made furniture which is being sold under the great names from the past.
