Stanley Webb Davies

Who was Stanley Webb Davies?

Stanley Webb Davies was one of Great Britain's premier makers of Arts and Crafts furniture. Based in Windermere in the Lake District his work was from the same generation of furniture makers as Robert Thompson. Stanley was born in Darwen, Lancashire, the son of a textile mill owner, and moved to Windermere in the Lake District to set up his workshop.

Like all of the artisans in the Arts and Crafts movement, such as William Morris and John Ruskin, his work was a direct backlash to the mechanisation and automation happening in Victorian times. His approach was for simple but elegant furniture handmade to a high standard.

There are a number of trademark styles that can be seen in his pieces as demonstrated below in the chest of Drawers. The alternating thumb nail chisels in the panels and rounded tops also appear in his Sideboard from 1942.

Davies' pieces are always marked with his initials and date of manufacture inside a rectangle - with the name of the actual craftsman who made the piece he designed inscribed next to or beneath this.

Many of his pieces are in private homes / collections, but many pieces can be found on display in the Arts and Crafts house at Blackwell and in the Abbott Hall Gallery in Kendal, Cumbria.