About Studio Furniture

Furniture produced by individual craftspeople has come to be known as studio furniture, indicating that the work has been created in a setting more resembling an artist’s studio than a factory. It distinguishes furniture truly made by hand, one unique piece at a time, from manufactured furniture falsely described as handcrafted as a marketing device. No laws govern the use of such terms.

The studio furniture movement started somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century as a revival of the Arts and Crafts Movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Arts and Crafts makers produced solid, handcrafted furniture as an aesthetic reaction to shoddy mass-produced furniture products from the industrial revolution of the late nineteenth century.

Studio Furniture: Truly Made by the Artist’s Own Hands

During the past few decades studio furniture has taken several directions, from traditional reproductions of historical period styles to designs that more accurately might be described as functional sculpture rather than furniture. In all of the best studio furniture, it is the training, skill, artistry, attention to detail, impeccable quality and often uniqueness of design that distinguishes it from manufactured furnishings.

One final note: Studio furniture is of necessity costly. A meticulously handcrafted, one-of-a-kind furniture piece, often requiring considerable design work and very expensive material (usually prime domestic and imported hardwoods), cannot compete in price with a mass-produced item. The purchaser of studio furniture understands the difference in quality and artistic value and, like the buyer of any of the finer things in life, appreciates its worth.