Three Seats That Don’t Match

Berne, Indiana is a small town in the north-east corner of the state where you are, by their own account, more likely to hear a horse than a siren. Smith Brothers has been making upholstery there since 1926, which is long enough for the company to have outlived most of the families whose names it has carried.

It began as Homer Manufacturing, building lower-priced chairs alongside the high-end work Dunbar was doing in the same town. Orv Smith managed it; he and his brother Les bought the majority of it, and the name became theirs. It changed hands in 1960 and again in 1970, and each time the new owners kept the Smith name, because by then it was worth more than the building.

What goes into the furniture has not moved much. Hardwood maple frames. Steel coil springs. Foam that holds its shape rather than collapsing into the outline of whoever sits there most. Then a cover you choose yourself, in fabric or top-grain leather. Four hundred people work there now across two factories, and none of it leaves the United States to get made.

For us they answer the upholstered half of a room. The case goods come out of the wood shops in Ohio and Indiana; the thing you actually sit in most evenings usually comes out of Berne.