Ribbon Cutting with Alex Bernhardt Jr.

On Thursday, September 17, Seville Home marked its first year under new ownership the way we hoped to: with the doors open, the floor full, and a ribbon across the entrance to the Bernhardt Interiors Gallery.

The Leawood Chamber of Commerce led the ribbon cutting at 3 in the afternoon. Our team, our clients, friends of the store and Chamber members gathered at the gallery entrance, and at the count of three the ribbon fell on a space that had been refreshed from the walls in. The gallery now carries new wallcoverings by Phillip Jeffries and Kansas City's own Porter Teleo, and a fresh edit of the pieces we think Kansas City will love most.

An evening with Alex Bernhardt Jr.

From 5 to 7 that evening, Alex Bernhardt Jr. joined us on the floor. Alex is the fourth generation of his family to lead Bernhardt, which his great-grandfather John Mathias Bernhardt founded in Lenoir, North Carolina, in 1889. It remains the largest family-owned furniture company in the United States, still headquartered in Lenoir, with eight manufacturing facilities in the state.

He came at the end of a long week of market preparation, took a wing chair in the gallery, and spent the evening in conversation with the designers, builders and homeowners in the room. He talked about how Bernhardt Interiors came to be, launched in 2008 as a collection built on mixing materials and layering texture, and about the idea that runs through the company's design philosophy: great design tells a story. Guests asked about what is coming at market, how pieces move from sketch to showroom, and what a fourth-generation furniture maker still finds exciting about the work.

Alex was generous with his time and interested in everyone he met. Several designers told us afterward that it was the first time they had heard the story of a line they had been specifying for years, told by the family that makes it.

What the gallery means

A dedicated Bernhardt Interiors gallery is not something a store buys. It is something a maker grants to a partner it trusts to present the line the way it was designed to be seen. Ours sits inside the Leawood showroom, styled as a room rather than a display, and every piece in it can be built to order in your finish and fabric with one of our designers alongside you.

Thank you to the Leawood Chamber, to John Nicholson and Dawn Pearson at Bernhardt, who helped bring the gallery together, to Alex for making the trip, and to everyone who spent part of their Thursday with us. One year in, this is what home looks like.

The gallery is open Monday through Saturday, 10 to 5, at 5205 W 135th Street in Leawood.