The Kittinger Company was founded in Buffalo, New York in 1866 as 'Thompson, Colie & Co.’ Around 1870 the company began crafting hand-made upholstered furniture and by this time had changed its name to 'Colie & Son’ after George and Oliver Colie took control. Today Kittinger is known for the high-quality furniture it produces that is featured prominently in the White House. The Kittinger Company is an American maker of traditional colonial reproduction furniture that was founded in 1866. Regardless of what Colonial Williamsburg said and believed, however, recent examination of individual pieces of Kittinger furniture made for the Restoration reveals that the New York factory relied far more on modern machine production methods than on craft methods of the eighteenth century.Jump to navigationJump to search Kittinger Company Family business Virtually handmade, said the Restoration, these Kittinger pieces were line-by-line reproductions, inside and out, of originals on display in Williamsburg, Virginia. Because a number of stores sold both Tomlinson and Kittinger products, Williamsburg developed the concept of “authenticity” to distinguish the copies being made by Kittinger from Tomlinson’s generic eighteenth-century adaptations.
Selected department stores were encouraged to build sales spaces that were period replicas of Raleigh Tavern rooms, and craft shops were developed in the historic area to promote the work of the various manufacturers. Furniture was the most important part of the plan, and Williamsburg licensed the Kittinger Company of Buffalo, New York, as the manufacturer. Outraged by Tomlinson’s actions and unwilling to abandon the retail market to those it felt were interlopers, Colonial Williamsburg set up a subsidiary corporation, Williamsburg Craftsmen, Inc., that licensed manufacturers to create reproductions of objects owned by the Restoration. In July 1936 Tomlinson of High Point, a mid-priced North Carolina furniture manufacturer, began a franchising and marketing concept called the Williamsburg Galleries that gained broad national acceptance in stores and among consumers.
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