Lexington artist Bob Timberlake has returned to the furniture business as trade war roils industry

Bob Timberlake was already a nationally renowned artist when he unveiled his first furniture collection, "The World of Bob Timberlake," about 35 years ago. Over the next ten years, its craftsmanship and traditional style became a dominant force in the industry. 

Decades later, and nearing age 90, he's back in business with an American-made collection. It comes at a time when international furniture makers face uncertainties from a global trade war. And that may give Timberlake an edge.

When a shipment of Bob Timberlake’s latest line of furniture comes off a truck at his gallery in Lexington, he’s smiling like a schoolboy.

“It's exciting, it’s like Christmas Eve,” he says. “It's almost like Christmas Eve every day, and when I get up in the morning, I can't wait to get here. It’s something different all the time.”

Long before he went into furniture, Timberlake made a name for himself as an artist. Painting in a style inspired by Andrew Wyeth, he captured a North Carolina aesthetic.

It included scenes in and near Lexington, where both he and his wife Kay, can trace their family roots back to the Revolutionary War. 

The furniture business was part of that heritage, dating back to his grandfather in the early 1900s.

“He was, you know, hauling around the county and selling out of the back of a wagon,” he says. “So then he incorporated the business in 1913, and then we've been one way or the other in the home furnishings ever since.”

More than 70 years after his grandfather incorporated, Bob Timberlake entered the business himself with a line of furniture built on his sharp eye for Americana. 

“The World of Bob Timberlake” quickly became a top seller in the industry and remained that way throughout the 1990s.

Jerry Epperson is a legendary industry analyst with more than 50 years of experience. He remembers the reaction when Timberlake’s collection was unveiled for the first time at the High Point Furniture Market. 

It was unlike anything he had ever seen.

“It was the only showroom I remember ever where the fire department had to come in and limit the number of people who were in the showroom,” he says. “It was that popular.”

Timberlake ended the line when the parent company decided to join the industry trend and offshore its furniture production. He said that would have meant ending the connection between the product and the place that inspired it.

“I didn’t want my stuff shipped across the big pond,” he says. “It would have been horrible to do that.”

More than two decades later, Timberlake — now 88 — is back again with a new collection that debuted last year. He says his need to design drove the return.

”If I get frustrated, it’s when I can't create something,” he says. “I am creating something in my mind or something all the time.”

As with the earlier collection, his “American Home” collection is built in the United States. Archbold Furniture, an Amish firm based in Ohio, is handling the solid cherry wood side. The leather upholstered end is made by Carolina Custom Leather in Conover.

The timing may turn out to be fortuitous for an American-made product.

The weekend’s furniture market brought tens of thousands of people to High Point. This spring’s event came with new challenges, says Epperson, the industry analyst. 

While there are many others like Timberlake making furniture domestically, the industry is now largely global. Manufacturing, components and supply lines are stretched across the world, especially in Asia.

The gathering determines what retailers will be selling for the next six months. Epperson says the international trade war makes it difficult to predict the immediate future.

“And we've got 80,000 people going there, and they've got 2,400 showrooms to go through, if they want to, and look at all the new product introductions that are being offered,” he says. “And most of us know right now we can't price most of the products.” 

High Point Market Authority President and CEO Tammy Covington says overall attendance mirrored last spring. But international travel was down, especially among buyers, the ones who will make the key purchasing decisions.

She says many marketgoers were looking for answers to where the industry stands amid the uncertainty.

“Someone said to me the other day, it is almost like the timing of market is still on the inhale of all of this. The exhale has not happened yet,” she says.

Timberlake is hoping other aspiring domestic furniture makers will take his approach: Start here, build here, stay here.