Stanley Webb Davies was one of Great Britain's premier makers of Arts and crafts

Arts and crafts

Arts and crafts comprise a whole host of activities and hobbies that are related to making things with one's hands and skill. These can be sub-divided into handicrafts or "traditional crafts" and "the rest"...

 furniture. Based in Windermere in the Lake District

Lake District

The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...

 his work was from the same generation of furniture makers as Robert (Mousey) Thompson

Robert (Mousey) Thompson

Robert Thompson was a British furniture maker. He lived in Kilburn, North Yorkshire, where he set up a business manufacturing oak furniture, which featured a carved mouse on almost every piece...

 (aka The Mouse Man). Stanley was born in Darwen

Darwen

Darwen is a market town and civil parish located within Lancashire, England. Along with its northerly neighbour, Blackburn, it forms the Borough of Blackburn with Darwen — a unitary authority area...

, Lancashire

Lancashire

Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...

, 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

Arts and Crafts movement

Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...

, such as William Morris

William Morris

William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

 and John Ruskin

John Ruskin

John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...

, his work was a direct backlash to the mechanisation and automation happening in Victorian times. His approach was for simple but elegant furniture hand-made 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 (1951) (left). The alternating thumb nail chisels in the panels and rounded tops also appear in his Sideboard from 1942 (right).




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

Blackwell (historic house)

Blackwell is a large house designed in the Arts and Crafts style by Baillie Scott. It was built 1898–1900, and is listed grade I as an outstanding example of British domestic architecture. The house was built as a holiday home for Sir Edward Holt, a wealthy Manchester brewer...

 and in the Abbott Hall Gallery in Kendal

Kendal

Kendal, anciently known as Kirkby in Kendal or Kirkby Kendal, is a market town and civil parish within the South Lakeland District of Cumbria, England...

, Cumbria.