Dorothy Drahms

Charles Burchfield may have known wallpaper designer Dorothy Drahms, who worked for the M. H. Birge & Sons Company from 1938 until they closed in 1983. Burchfield moved to Buffalo to work there as an assistant designer in November 1921 and became chief designer in 1927. However, he felt “temperamentally unfit for an executive or responsible position,” so he quit on July 31, 1929, when Frank K. M. Rehn became his dealer in New York City. 

Dorothy Drahms grew up in Buffalo, graduated from Lafayette High School and got her art training at the Albright Art School. Through promotions at Birge, she became a chief designer.

Speaking about difficult economic conditions during World War II when there were what we now call supply chain shortages, she “observed that ‘no new designs were created, no metal was available for rollers and older patterns were reproduced, although the paper quality was not in line with Birge standards.’” In Bonnie Ulrich’s article, “A Design Wonderland in Buffalo: The M. H. Birge & Sons Company,” published by Western New York Heritage in Fall 2011, she wrote that Drahms “worked as a colorist and stylist, and traveled to buy designs for the company in Europe and Africa.

The obituary for Dorothy Drahms published in The Buffalo News on April 21, 2003, provided additional information. During her career, “Drahms designed for Oleg Cassini in New York City and Walt Disney World. She redesigned the original wallcoverings at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC and the Wilcox Mansion in Buffalo, home of the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site. She also was involved in restoring several other historic sites, such as the Eisenhower Library, before retiring in the mid-1980s.”