Southern Charm

WE SPENT A DAY WITH MITCHELL GOLD AND BOB WILLIAMS, WHOSE PIONEERING FURNITURE BRAND CELEBRATES ITS 30TH THIS YEAR TOO.

- Tim Mckeough

IN 1989, MITCHELL GOLD AND BOB WILLIAMS founded their eponymous furniture firm in Taylorsville, North Carolina, with the vision of delivering livable, contemporary style with a lead time that was a fraction of the industry norm—a few weeks instead of a few months. The pair rapidly grew their boutique operation into one of the most respected home-furnishings manufacturers in the country, producing everything from sofas to tables to lighting. Along the way, Gold and Williams championed sustainability long before it was in vogue and pushed to demolish dated ideas about families with attention-grabbing ads featuring same-sex parents and an openly gay former high-school football player.

Today, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams continues to set the bar for everyday American style.

Williams rises at 5 a.m. “I go to the gym first, then come home and get ready for work,” he says, just as the sunlight begins filtering into the 1947 house in Hickory, North Carolina, he shares with his husband, Stephen Heavner. Breakfast is an opportunity to admire one of his prized possessions: a restored 1936 eight-burner, three-oven Magic Chef range. “I found it in this little-bitty antique appliance shop in Georgia, and it took a year to restore,” he says.