(upbeat music) - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to Side by Side.

My guest today is preserving legacy and inspiring the next generations of designers too.

She's the executive director of the largest furniture design library in the world.

Today we'll visit with Ms.

Karla Jones.

- Funding for Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - Coca-Cola Consolidated makes and serves over 300 of the world's best brands and flavors to over 65 million consumers across 14 states and the District of Columbia.

With 17,000 purpose-driven teammates, we are Coca-Cola Consolidated.

- The Budd Group has been serving the Southeast for over 60 years.

Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction, comprehensive facility support with The Budd Group.

- Truist, we're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.

(upbeat music) - Karla, you're the executive director of the world's largest furniture library.

In fact, you call it the largest furniture specialty library, I believe.

- Correct.

- Why is it called, why is the word specialty there?

- Because we focus on one particular subject or interest.

So our collection involves interior design, furniture design, architecture, textiles, decorative arts, anything home furnishings related and concerning the history of furniture.

- And the library is named Bienenstock Furniture Library after a person, right?

- Yes.

- It was an idea on the family.

- Sandy and Bernice Bienenstock founded the library in 1970.

The Bienenstocks were owners of Furniture World Magazine, which is still in print today.

It's a trade publication that's geared towards furniture retailers.

So throughout their career, they came to High Point Market for years and years.

They made friends in town.

They were heavily involved in the industry.

So during their career, they started collecting books.

And I like to say their collection became an obsession because they had over 3,000 books in their private collection.

- All about furniture.

- All about furniture and home furnishings.

So as they're reaching retirement age, they're thinking, how can we leave this great resource for anybody who loves furniture to use it and have access to it?

They felt like High Point was the perfect place for that because it's the furniture capital of the world and in close proximity to all the design things that are going on.

So they purchased the home in 1968 and founded the library in 1970.

- It's an historic home, by the way.

- It is, it's on the National Historic Register.

The house was-- - On Main Street and High Point.

- 1009 North Main Street.

It is a colonial revival style home.

All of the granite for the house is from Mount Airy, North Carolina.

So it was brought in on the railroad and hand cut on site for the house.

- And do people come to just look at the house even if they're not interested in the furniture?

- We welcome anybody to come through the door.

Our main customers, so to speak, are furniture designers, interior designers, artists and design students.

But we have people who just love furniture, who wanna look and maybe do some research on a particular piece of furniture that they have or just see what the house looks like 'cause it's a gorgeous structure.

- So if a furniture designer wanted to come and do some research in the library, do they pay a fee or is it free?

- It's free, it's free.

We're a non-profit organization.

We're open to anybody who wants to come and learn.

We really are a center for design collaboration and research for design individuals and the general public.

- And does that include students?

- Yes, we have a lot of students.

We're very fortunate to be located near a lot of good design schools.

So schools will hold class at the library and assign their students a project to work on or they'll just come and let them have time for research.

- I see.

Tell me how a librarian like you, with a limited staff, how do you keep up this library?

I mean, these books are old books that the Bean & Stocks left for you.

- Right.

- Do you add more books to the library or you have just the original 3,000 books?

- We've added to the collection over the years.

So currently we have a little over 5,000 books in the collection.

We're very fortunate to have a rare book room inside our rare book room.

It's 350 books.

It's a climate and humidity controlled chamber.

Our oldest book is from 1543.

It is a book on architecture about a Roman architect, Vitruvius.

It's written in Latin.

It has been preserved and it's a beautiful book.

We do have different rules in our rare book room than we do the regular collection.

So if you're gonna make an appointment and come to the rare book room, which we highly suggest, you wear white gloves, you get the whole experience.

Book preservation is very important to us.

We want people coming in the library.

We want you to touch the book.

We feel like there's an experience to holding a book from the 16 and 1700s in your hand.

And in this industry, particularly, you know, with a creative mind, we feel like that's part of the process.

You look at these wonderful cabinet makers in the 17th century and you're inspired to create the next great thing.

And our tagline at the library is, touch history, design the future.

Because we really do, touch history, design the future.

- Touch history, design the future.

- Because we feel like if you keep up on the history and you know your history, your furniture design, and you use that and allow that to filter through you, your creative mind can go anywhere to design something great for the future.

- And maybe I don't know much about furniture, but when I think historically, I think about traditional furniture.

But today you have companies that create this very modern furniture.

How do they use the library or do they?

- They do.

And all cabinet masters of the 17th and 1800s, it was traditional.

You talk about the Chippendale leg or Sheraton and Hepple-White, which we have first editions of those books in our rear book room.

But it's amazing to me, you can have five different designers in the library, all looking at the same historical detail.

And every one of them will look at that and use it in a completely different way.

One designer might say, this particular detail of this drawing would be a great textile pattern.

One student may look at a leg on a piece of furniture and wonder how that could be transformed into a lamp base.

So it really is amazing when you have a creative mind looking back at the furniture masters and the history of furniture, how it can really transform into something completely different and totally modern.

- How do you know all that stuff?

I mean, how did you learn all this historic data about home furnishings?

And now you're keeping up a library with 5,000 books and working with tons of designers and students and others who partake of your service.

- I began my career in interior design.

I was a student at Randolph Community College and I practiced interior design for several years.

I had the great luck to actually work for Sandy Bean & Stock when I was in college.

- But you also had your own design company.

- I did, I did residential interior design.

So while I was in college, I worked for the Bean & Stock Furniture Library during furniture markets as a college student.

So I was able to meet Sandy Bean & Stock, which was a wonderful opportunity.

Then I spent 20 years in residential design and I had the opportunity 15 years ago to come back as executive director and it really felt like coming home because I had been involved with the library for so many years.

So using that interior design background has really given me the knowledge to continue this career with furniture history.

- And if somebody who's not in the business were to come to the library, how do they benefit?

What is it that they will find informative, stimulating, inspiring?

- I think it's important just as consumers and general public that you understand maybe the styles that you like.

Everybody has a certain design style or something that they feel comfortable with for their home.

And I think when you come in and you see so many different representations of furniture and design and you see historic home and you see our rare book room and understand our desire for book preservation and keeping this collection around for another 55 years for people to come in and use, it really does inspire people to wanna know more about furniture 'cause it's such a part of our daily life.

- And these rare books, you don't mind people touching them even with a glove?

- They have to wear gloves.

We have some rules.

Only one book is allowed at a time out of the room and that's to keep it in the proper environment as long as possible.

We really do want people to use them and have access to them.

We don't put them in a photocopier.

You can take pictures, but we really do try to be respectful of the book, handle it gently, but we want to share the information with whoever's desiring to see it.

So we do want it to be an interactive collection.

- How do you maintain the books?

I mean, somebody might tear a page by mistake.

Somebody might, it just gets worn on the outside, et cetera.

- We have, we're very passionate about book preservation.

Because we want the books to be used for years to come.

We select books each year that we want preserved.

We're lucky that we have Etherington Conservation in Greensboro, North Carolina.

They handle all of our preservation.

They do work for the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and right here in North Carolina.

So they do all of our book preservation.

It's a costly thing.

It can be anywhere from $600 to $3,000 to preserve one book, depending on the need.

So we love when people make donations for book preservation, 'cause that's how we're maintaining the collection.

But it is important to us to keep the books in the best possible condition.

- So I assume there are many other libraries on furniture around the world.

- Right.

- Am I right?

- Yes, and people have private libraries.

And MESDA over in Winston-Salem has a great decorative arts library.

We have, you know, we cover the home furnishings industry as far as decorative arts and textiles and interior design, furniture history, furniture design, art and architecture.

So all of the genres within the home furnishings industry we cover.

- Is there another home furnishings library in North Carolina?

- Not that we're aware of.

- I see, it's only you.

- Right.

- And what about these new designers?

Do you have also their books or all the books that you have are just traditional historic books?

- We have everything from, you know, Art Nouveau to mid-century modern to current day designers who are writing books and putting out new information.

We have a great relationship with the publishers of the books.

And so since we're a nonprofit, we love when the publishers donate directly to us to add to our collection.

And we do get that regularly.

So the newer coffee table books and designer books, we're getting donated from the publishers to add to the collection.

- Yes.

And how do you finance the library?

You don't charge money for people to come in.

- Right.

The Bean & Stocks left an endowment fund to meet basic needs.

And then for our student programs, we have donations and contributions from the industry to help support our student programs.

The Bean & Stocks were very passionate about investing in students.

We feel like when you invest in the students-- - I mean, I assume these are-- - Interior design students.

- Furniture design, product and industrial design, graphic design and textile design students from all over the United States can participate in our programs.

- They come here to be in your line of-- - For our design competition that we hold each year, that is broken into an interior design category and a furniture design category.

Any junior or senior in college majoring in a design related field can enter these categories.

We award $15,000 a year in scholarship money through that competition.

And it's open to any student in the United States.

We also have something we're very proud of.

We're in our fifth year now.

It's the Bean & Stock Future Designers Summit.

We select 35 to 40 students from across the United States, design students.

- These are college students.

- College students each year.

They have to apply and show their portfolio.

And we choose 35 to 40 students to come for three days in High Point.

It's free for the student.

So it's done through contributions.

Their hotel, their transportation, all of their meals.

And while they're here for three days, we have keynote speakers.

We have mentoring sessions with industry professionals.

We tour showrooms, we tour manufacturing facilities.

We teach them about what High Point Market is.

80% of the students that come here for our summit have never heard of High Point Market.

So we're educating them about High Point and our design community here.

And how the High Point Market is gonna be an important part of their career.

So we really are giving them a chance to learn things they can't learn in the classroom.

It's been very successful.

Each year we have a waiting list of students that would like to attend.

And again, it's free for the students.

And we do that through donations and contributions from the industry.

And it really is us investing in the future of the home furnishings industry by investing in these students.

- Yeah, it's a great service that you're doing.

With technology taking over our world, and I assume still a lot of furniture design is done through technology, not the old fashioned pencil on a pad.

I personally love books.

I love to read a book.

I love to hold a book and read it.

But we are living in different times.

And artificial intelligence is coming on the scene and in a big way, it's always been here in some form.

How does that affect what your work is?

And how can you be sure that a library like yours can survive 50 more years?

- Right, the use of libraries has changed so much in the world today.

And we realize that.

But for us, it's not our desire to digitize the collection and archive it.

We really do want it to be a hands-on experience.

We wanna maintain this collection and have it available for many years to come, because it is part of the process.

It's a part of the adventure to hold a book from 1543 in your hands and look at the contents of that book and use it to create something fabulous.

- But it's in Latin.

- Right.

- I'm not gonna understand it.

- The good thing about this industry, it's all about the pictures.

It's all about the engravings.

It's all about the drawings.

It doesn't matter.

We have 14 different languages in our collection, which is amazing.

The B&E was traveled all over the world.

- I'm excited to understand, you know, how, I mean, looking at the pictures does not tell you how the piece was designed and therefore manufactured.

- Well, interesting enough, some of the first editions from the 16, 17, and 1800s do have measurements and detailed information about construction furniture.

And we do have a whole section in the library on furniture construction and manufacturing processes.

So you can learn that as well.

So you don't have to read the words to truly capture what that is all about.

- Right.

- And what have you seen in terms of the cultural, societal, maybe even talent base change in designers?

- We have seen a lot of this through our student summit.

So we bring these juniors and seniors to High Point and they're a year, a year and a half from graduating and entering this industry.

And to see their excitement and their fresh ideas and the way they sort of feed off of each other when they're with these other 35 students, I think the future of the industry is very bright.

I'm excited about it.

I'm excited about our involvement in showing these students the industry and seeing their creative minds and seeing their excitement.

They're here asking questions and they do get excited when they, you know, it's like a light bulb goes off when they enter our rare book room 'cause they're so used to looking at something online, having access online to everything.

So when they come and they see the rare book room and they're introduced to our resources, I think they kind of get it.

They know the difference of looking at the Chippendale book online and actually holding a book from 1754 in your hands.

It's part of the experience.

- Am I right in saying that in the nineties and beyond maybe 2000, so much of the furniture went offshore was no longer produced right here in North Carolina, mostly for labor costs or labor savings.

So lots of companies took their production somewhere else.

It seems to me that that would affect to a great extent the interest in interior design or more importantly in furniture design, right?

This interior design, but there's also designing the price itself.

Am I right in assuming that that's- - I think there was a time when students were not necessarily looking at that as much as a career opportunity, but we're seeing, I think an increase in that.

When these students come to town, they're coming from strong programs.

There's so many good interior design programs.

- Interior design.

- And furniture design.

We have furniture design.

There's a lot of good colleges that have strict furniture design programs or they have strong industrial design programs that have a furniture component within the program.

Of course, textile programs are strong.

So I think, and part of our responsibility is to show these students it is a viable career.

There are great opportunities here and your degree in furniture or design can lead you in so many directions within this industry.

And that's important for them to know that they have a wide range of choices for employment within the industry.

- So Karla, how does this work?

Someone designs the piece of furniture here assuming it's manufactured offshore, is designed here and then the design is taken offshore and therefore is manufactured there?

- A lot of it is, but there's still some good manufacturing going on in North Carolina.

- And more of it.

- Right, right.

- So tell me about the furniture market in the city of High Point.

It attracts tons of people, not as many as it used to perhaps because of the smaller furniture stores or it got out of business and so on.

But tell me about, how does this market influence and impact certainly your library, but also the field of furniture design?

Not so much interior design, I get interior design, but furniture design, really creating the pieces to begin with.

- Right.

Furniture designers are important, part of the component for us.

They spend a lot of time in our library researching what next collection they're working on.

They're doing research on history of furniture for their ideas for the collections they're working on.

So it's a very important piece to the puzzle.

And we're always telling the students, this industry is not just the furniture designer.

It's not just the interior designer.

It's not just the textile designer or the graphic designer or the photographer who makes the furniture look great.

It takes all of those creative minds to make this one successful industry.

And High Point is the place where everybody comes together to celebrate that, to see new product, to gain more knowledge about the industry.

And that's exciting, exciting for our town and it's very exciting for the industry.

- Is it another home furnishings market in the United States of America?

There should be one in Dallas at one time.

- I think there's a smaller one there, of course, Las Vegas, but High Point is really the place to be.

- Is the main place.

And what about, for example, Italian furniture?

What about, I'm thinking of places in the world famous for creating truly beautiful pieces of wood made with great designs.

Those are not made here.

- No, but they're represented here.

All furniture's represented here.

Right.

So everybody has access to seeing all the amazing things.

And within our collection at the library, we of course have a huge Italian section, French, and as mentioned before, 14 foreign languages are represented.

So you can see anything and everything at High Point Market and at the Bienenstock Furniture Library.

- You know, there's been a lot of talk about furniture going in the direction of e-commerce.

I think of a company called Wayfair, for example, they go on and buy anything and everything.

Has that been a successful venture?

I don't mean that company, but the whole notion of buying furniture via, you know, your computer just-- - I think the younger generation is definitely doing that.

But I still think there's such an importance to seeing a piece of furniture.

- Feel it, sit in it, and-- - How does it feel?

The quality, understanding quality of furniture, and that's something we do at the library.

You know, we have so many books explaining manufacturing and quality and furniture terms.

And I think it's great to educate yourself, especially if you're gonna be a consumer, on, you know, the quality of furniture.

What are you buying?

There's nothing like sitting in, you know, in a chair before you buy it.

- And when you speak of textiles, you mean fabric.

- Right, correct.

- And so you have books on fabric design.

- We have a lot of textile, yes.

Textile design, textile construction.

So it's a vast collection.

- How has that changed?

In the old days, you saw an artist sitting there literally with the colors, and they'll create a piece of fabric that they're gonna duplicate.

But today, that's all done-- - I'm sure it is.

I know, you know, there are plenty of good textile programs around, NC State has a great one.

And I'm sure most of that design for these students is probably being taught digitally through some programs, right?

- Yeah.

What do you see of the future of the Bienenstock Library, and by extension, the whole notion about creativity and innovation as we know it?

I know in my own home, I have a dining set, for example, that's handmade by truly artisans who created all that.

Today, so much of that is done, fabricated in big machinery, robotics create all that.

That is, in some cases, disappointing.

You know, you want the beautiful artisan work, right?

What is your view of where the world of furniture is going?

- Well, I think every style tends to come back around again at some point, and I know-- - Like clothing.

- Right, right.

So I think at some point, and I think we're seeing a resurgence of this, of the younger generation looking at the, you know, your grandmother's furniture and the great carvings and the desire to see that again.

But for us, our goal is to maintain this collection, preserve these books.

We've been here 55 years as a nonprofit organization, and we wanna continue to serve the industry.

We wanna continue to have our collection be accessible and be a place where designers and anyone who loves furniture can come and do research and collaborate and just be a center for design.

That's our goal, to just continue to have our collection accessible and be present for the industry.

- Have you seen an uptick in visitors, or have you seen a decline in visitors?

Why would someone fly in here to come to the Beane and Stock Library when they can get on their computer and access digitally?

- Right, I think it's the experience.

I think it's seeing the books in person, that we get a lot of visitors during market who are here, you know, and not here normally, you know, out of town.

And while they're here, they can stop by and use our facilities.

And then we have a lot of people, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, who drive in and use our facilities, right.

I would say our main customer is gonna be the furniture designer.

Interior designers working on historic projects.

We've had students from the North Carolina School of the Arts in before, if they're doing a play and the set has to be at a certain time period, then they're researching, you know, the set.

So our customer can be very broad.

We're here to help anybody who wants information about furniture.

- Well, I think if all you're doing, thank you for being with me today.

- Thank you, it's a pleasure.

(upbeat music) ♪ - Funding for Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - Coca-Cola Consolidated makes and serves over 300 of the world's best brands and flavors to over 65 million consumers across 14 states and the District of Columbia.

With 17,000 purpose-driven teammates, we are Coca-Cola Consolidated.

- The Budd Group has been serving the Southeast for over 60 years.

Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction, comprehensive facility support with The Budd Group.

- Truist, we're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.