Cooper Hewitt says...
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 for the company owned at the time by Phil Warner. Lewis and Fannie McClure took control of Salisbury Artisans in the 1960s, along with master woodturner Richard Parsons who had worked under Warner. David Bowen purchased the Salisbury Artisans complex in 1997 and continues to use the space as a cabinet shop today.
