Office Furniture

LIFE - AND THE mourning - goes on. Fifteen Baltimore County firefighters will catch an early Amtrak to New York City today, then switch to the Long Island Rail Road for the trip to St. Anthony's Church in Oceanside and the funeral of Thomas Gardner. Kenneth Marino's funeral was in the same church Tuesday, and about 20 Baltimore County firefighters stood at attention for that one. The same day, another group went to two funerals on Staten Island - one for Steven Olson, one for Daniel Libretti.

New positions Braniff is named CFO of Cedar North America Cedar Inc., a global consulting, applications and outsourcing firm with headquarters in Baltimore and London, named Edward Braniff chief financial officer of Cedar North America responsible for all financial, information technology and legal operations. He was formerly chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Global TeleExchange. A resident of Bethesda, he is a law graduate of Seton Hall University and he also holds an M.B.A.

HIGH POINT, N.C. -- The stars at the recent International Home Furnishings Market were a supermodel, a super prognosticator and a fellow who's super rich. Oh, yes, and a familiar kitchen countertop material, but we'll get to that later.Vanguard Furniture debuted its new line of furniture designed with the help of model Kathy Ireland. Hooker Furniture unveiled office furniture for women that bears the name of trend spotter Faith Popcorn, and Harden introduced publisher and collector Christopher Forbes along with a line bearing the Forbes' family name.

WASHINGTON -- With inmates at 72 federal prisons crafting hundreds of millions of dollars in pajamas, desk chairs and other products, manufacturers are complaining that prison labor is stealing jobs and profits.The idea that some workers, whose taxes keep prisons operating, might lose their jobs because of prison labor "just doesn't sit well with us," said Douglas Brackett, executive vice president of the American Furniture Manufacturers Association in High Point, N.C.Furniture makers especially have rallied around a bill introduced last month by Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan that would stamp out an advantage enjoyed by Federal Prison Industries -- a requirement that federal agencies shop first with the inmate program, even though the goods are not always cheaper or better made.

All those who are weary of the home-office-in-a-closet concept, please raise your hands. Converting a closet into an at-home office has always been a lame idea. But with distressing frequency and for reasons unknown, it continues to pop up in decorating magazines.Even if there were such a thing as a "spare" closet, who in his right mind would want to spend his work day (week, month, year, career) working in one?Something on the order of 50 million Americans work at home full- or part-time.

Old cases for new componentsWhen is a computer center more than a computer center? When it's an antique English bowfront armoire converted by Gaines McHale Antiques & Home to home-office use. The concept is simple: office furniture that doesn't look like office furniture, but fits in seamlessly with a home's decor.The piece's interior panels are replaced with modern substitutes, to accommodate a computer. The handcrafted conversions can be reversed to restore the furniture to its original state.

Howard County Council members C. Vernon Gray and Darrel E. Drown traded barbs yesterday, with Mr. Gray refusing to bow to the council chairman's demand that he repay the county more than $1,000 for travel expenses and cellular telephone bills.The East Columbia Democrat said he owes nothing because his expenses remain under the council's $4,800 annual limit. He said the limit has been in effect only four months -- dating from its approval in October by council members."That's nuts," said Mr. Drown, the Republican council chairman.

Westinghouse Electric Corp. agreed yesterday to sell its Knoll Group, which manufactures office furniture, for $565 million in cash.Knoll, which is one of the country's largest manufacturers of office furniture, is to be acquired by Warburg, Pincus Ventures L.P., an affiliate of E. M. Warburg, Pincus & Co., a New York-based financial services organization.The sale is expected to be completed in the first quarter.Westinghouse disclosed earlier this month that it planned to sell the defense operations of its Linthicum-based Electronic Systems division and another unidentified unit to help pay down its debt from its $5.4 billion acquisition of CBS Inc.Yesterday's transaction indicates that the Maryland-based defense arm of Westinghouse might bring more money than some analysts first thought.

A Howard County agency charged with helping the poor plans to spend about $2,000 per bureaucrat on office furniture.As part of its planned move from the Howard County District Court building in Ellicott City to Columbia's Gateway Center, the county Department of Social Services wants to spend as much as $280,000 in state funds for 138 modular desk stations.The department has 143 full-time employees, not all of whom will use the desk stations. The extra stations will be used for future staff expansions.

Howard H. Hine IIIAssistant treasurerHoward H. Hine III, an assistant treasurer at Rosedale Federal Savings and Loan Association and collector of science fiction videos, died Tuesday of AIDS-related pneumonia at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was 35.Mr. Hine, a hemophiliac, was infected with the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome during a blood transfusion in the early 1980s, according to his father, Dr. Howard H. Hine Jr. of Relay."He was a medical miracle when he beat an earlier AIDS-related pneumonia attack in 1989," Dr. Hine said.