Oak office furniture has been popular for at least 100 years. The greatest surge in popularity in this entire furniture group occurred during the heyday of what is known as Grand Rapids Oak. This in combination with Arts and Crafts and Mission style furniture naturally spread into the area of desks for the office and chairs. Perhaps it is merely the incredible durability that has kept oak office furniture popular even in this day of plastics and foam upholstery. Or perhaps its popularity is simply based upon the fact that oak furniture of any kind is beautiful.
Whatever the reason, solid oak or oak veneer furniture for both home and the office continues to sell year after year. Of course the general design of this office furniture has had to adapt to accommodate modern devices such as computers and other telephony. Important improvements in office furniture design such as ergonomics are very difficult to apply in solid oak furniture pieces such as chairs. But other important office furniture types made of oak have been adapted extremely successfully over the years. Many items such as lawyers’ stacks and other bookcases are virtually unchanged. The only changes made in all filing cabinets over the years are accommodation of legal size papers and of course the prerequisite lock that we tend to need on everything these days.