The Vancouver (BC) distributor of the [new] L & J.G. Stickley furniture line is a firm called Thomson and Page. T&P recently sent a letter to its customers containing the following announcement:

“Recently we made the difficult decision to discontinue our relationship with Stickley due to the fact that they have decided to take the company in a new and different direction. The owners are changing the manufacturing and marketing of the Stickley furniture line in a manner that no longer coincides with [our] brand. In the last couple of years Stickley has expanded and have started producing some of their lines off shore. As you know, we have always been known for the quality of our product and feel that the distinct attributes of their product could be sacrificed due to the large and rapid growth of the company.”

I suspect there may be more to this than meets the eye. I am curious whether this is simply a case of a disgruntled distributor looking for an excuse to end the relationship or whether there are changes at Stickley that might justify a distributor in rethinking the relationship.

The T&P website, by the way, continues to trumpet their status as a distributor. www.thomsonandpage.com .

Comments in this forum have not always been kind to the new line but the name “Stickley” still stands for something in the marketplace and if there are developments that might tarnish it [further?] they should be more widely known. Does anyone have any information to share?

I have to disagree with your assertion that the name "Stickley" still stands for something in the market place. Even before they began manufacturing some of their line offshore they made reproductions of Limbert and Roycroft designs while claiming that their stuff was not repros because the company has been around continuously since the beginnings of the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Even if they made only L & J.G. designs that would be a dubious and unethical semantic stretch. To make such claims about designs of other manufacturers, even Gus, is simply lying to those customers unacquainted with A/C. I don't know what this distributor's motives are; they may be dishonest as well, but I wouldn't buy any contemporary Stickley.