Salisbury Artisans

Salisbury Artisans was founded in about 1860 as the Salisbury Cutlery Handle Company, in the town of Salisbury, Connecticut. By the 1920’s the manufactory was one of the town’s largest employers, known for producing handles in antler and woods such as rosewood, tigerwood, and teakwood. By the late 1940s, the firm was producing small lathe-turned woodenware for the home. In 1948, the Museum of Modern Art included Salisbury Artisans’ “bee stick wood muddlers” made of Venezuelan ebony in the exhibition entitled “Christmas Show: Items Under Ten Dollars,” a “selective display of inexpensive, well-designed articles for everyday life.” In 1951, Eva Zeisel designed a line of wooden tableware... more.