Shmuel Kravetsky, later Samuel Kravet, emigrated from Grodno, Russia to the United States in 1903 with his wife and three sons. As a tailor, he began supplying tailored apparel to an upscale clientele in the New York metropolitan area. Recognizing in his clients a desire for interior design assistance as well, he began fashioning decorative trimmings such as tie-backs and tassels, which he would offer when he made house calls. With this subtle shift from the design of apparel to the design of interior design products, Samuel Kravet participated in the historical development of a then emerging interior design industry. In 1918, Samuel Kravet opened a small trimmings store on Norfolk Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In 1923, his four sons – Morris, Sam, Sol, and Hy – joined the business. They relocated to E. 21st St. and changed the company's name to S. Kravet & Sons. In 1924, they began offering decorative fabrics. While the craft of furniture and textile making and the art of interior decoration have been around for centuries, the notion of the interior design professional only began to emerge in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Before then, interior design had largely been the role of upholsterers and architects. Yet the affluence of ‘the American Century’ and the growth of the middle and upper classes broadened the base of those willing to hire professional designers. In response to these developments, S. Kravet & Sons relocated to 38 E. 30th St. and began selling to the interior design trade exclusively. The business grew quickly. In 1952, the company relocated to 104 E. 25th St. where it would have new offices as well as a warehouse for the storage and preparation of product. In 1963, the company changed its name to Kravet Fabrics, Inc. and expanded once again, this time moving to a larger warehouse and office facility in Woodbury, Long Island, New York. The company began exporting in 1965 and establishing showrooms nationwide in 1970. Further expansions to Anderson, South Carolina and Canada followed. Kravet expanded its product offerings to include furniture in 1991, carpet in 2005, and lighting in 2007. It also acquired home furnishing manufacturer Lee Jofa in 1995 and fabric and upholstery maker GP & J Baker in 2001. To encompass this broader offering of products, in 2002, the company changed its name to Kravet Inc. In 2011, Kravet acquired fabric and upholstery maker Brunschwig & Fils in a bankruptcy auction for $9.655 million. Brunschwig & Fils subsequently provided the upholstery for the 2015 Obama chairs, used in the 2015 renovation of the State Dining Room at the White House in Washington, D.C. The Kravet high-end licensing division, Kravet Collections, began in 1993, to showcase designers and the design accents of famous locations, lifestyles and brands. The Mark Hampton Fabric and Trimmings collections were the first license to join the Kravet family. Its success has brought forth numerous other licensed collections. These include fabric, carpet and trimmings collections created by interior designers such as Alexa Hampton, Barclay Butera, Barbara Barry, Candice Olson, Michael Berman, Michael Weiss, Sarah Richardson, Vicente Wolf, and Windsor Smith, as well as collections inspired by fashion brands such as Oscar de la Renta, Diane von Furstenberg, kate spade new york, Echo Design, Joseph Abboud, Calvin Klein Home, and Thom Filicia.
Bethpage Archive
In 2011, Kravet constructed an archive at their headquarters in Bethpage, New York with the acquisition of Brunschwig & Fils who collected a majority of the textiles in the collection. The collection rivals many museums and is known for its eighteenth-century copperplate printed fabrics and lushly floral nineteenth-century block printed furnishing fabrics.
