Cup

Lore & Background

Cups have been used since the Stone Age and have been found at archaeological sites throughout the world. A large number of the earliest cups are excavated from burials, and may have held offerings or supplies for the afterlife. Cups do not feature strongly in the earliest pottery found in most areas; the wares were thick and heavy, as were the carved stone vessels found in several early cultures. Probably cups in organic materials that have now decomposed, such as wood, bamboo and dried gourds were widely used. Large shells and birds' eggs have been used in some areas almost up to the present. Very simple single-use kulhar cups in unglazed terracotta, and sometimes unfired clay, are still used in South Asia, now mainly at tea stalls, and are very similar to those found at sites of the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilization.

Reader's Guide

The cup is a fundamental drinking vessel with a history stretching back to the Stone Age, found in nearly every culture. Its definition is fluid, varying by generation and region; for example, in the 1970s older generations expected a cup to be porcelain with a handle and saucer, while younger generations did not. The Bell Beaker culture (c. 2800 BC) marks an important archaeological phase named after its distinctive beaker cups. High-status cups in expensive materials have been important status symbols since at least the Bronze Age, with examples like the Ringlemere Cup and Rillaton Gold Cup. Ancient Greek drinking cups were often wide, shallow bowls on short stems with two horizontal handles, while Roman elites preferred glass cups by the 2nd century AD. The cup's legacy includes modern sporting trophies and church chalices, which derive from medieval standing cups.

Did You Know?

• The Bell Beaker culture is named after its distinctive inverted-bell pottery beaker cups, marking the beginning of the European Bronze Age from around 2800 BC.
• In the 1970s, the older generation expected a cup to be made of porcelain and have both a handle and a saucer, while the younger generation made no such distinction.

Origins and the Road to a National Name

Within just a year, production had scaled to between five hundred and a thousand chairs per day, signaling immediate commercial momentum. Finch, acquired the operation and steered it through its formative decades. The company's growth was not solely organic; it absorbed competitors over time. Huntley Furniture—a Winston-Salem-based maker that had grown into the nation's largest bedroom and dining room furniture producer—merged with Thomasville Furniture Co. to form Thomasville Furniture Industries.

Corporate Ownership and the Long Decline

By the 2010s, the company's physical footprint in Thomasville was shrinking. The remaining hundred employees were slated for a move to Eastchester Drive in High Point. The final blow came on January 21, 2014, when Heritage Home Group, the company's new owner, announced that all Thomasville Furniture operations would cease by March 21, eliminating 84 local jobs and effectively ending the furniture-making industry in the city that had borne its name for over a century.

The Big Chair and the Identity of Chair City

Few symbols capture the intertwined identity of a product and a place quite like the Big Chair. Standing in the town square of Thomasville, North Carolina, this eighteen-foot-tall reproduction of a Duncan Phyfe design has served as a public monument to the town's furniture heritage. It was conceived as a celebration of mutual prosperity: the chair company that gave the town its economic identity, and the town that proudly embraced the nickname Chair City. The Big Chair was never merely decorative; it embodied the shared pride of workers, merchants, and residents who built their livelihoods around seating. Even after the factory closed its doors in 2014 and the physical manufacturing sites in North Carolina and Virginia were redeveloped or demolished for new industrial purposes, the oversized chair remained in the square—a tangible reminder that the town's story was, for more than a hundred years, inseparable from the craft of making chairs.

A Brand That Outlives the Factory

Even after Thomasville Furniture ceased manufacturing in 2014, the name continued to appear in American homes through licensed and branded product lines. At its peak, the company maintained dedicated galleries in more than four hundred retail furniture stores nationwide, plus thirty Thomasville Home Furnishing stores that carried exclusively Thomasville products. The cabinetry segment survived in a different form: Thomasville Cabinetry is produced by MasterBrand Cabinets, a division of Fortune Brands Home and Security, at several North American facilities. These cabinets are sold exclusively through The Home Depot, and manufacturers such as Schrock Cabinetry of Illinois produce units bearing the Thomasville name. umbrella.