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Our History
Smith McDonald is proud to offer the broadest assortment
of desk, office and conference room accessory collections available today. These products were developed by two of the Contract Furniture Industry's most
prolific and longest established manufacturers, Smith Metal Arts, and
McDonald Products. With roots back to the late 1800's, Smith McDonald proudly remain
the preeminent manufacturer of desk and office accessories to this day, offering the greatest selection of quality desk and office accessories available,
as well as a history rich with firsts and innovations.
Smith Metal Arts was established in Buffalo, NY in 1889 by German immigrant
and metal and leather goods craftsman Otto Heintz, as the Art Crafts Shop, and began producing a variety of items fabricated primarily from Copper. He changed the name to the Heintz Art Metal Shop in 1906, and switched from Copper as his base material to Bronze and Sterling Silver. Heintz manufactured such items as vases, bowls, candlesticks, smoking accessories, lamps, picture frames, jewelry, and desk accessories, such as desk blotters, pen and letter
holders, envelope sealers and ink blotters, and in fact, developed the first "lay-flat" page type of desktop calendar base. Following Heintz's
death in 1918, the company was purchased by Frederick Smith, their top
salesman, and through collaboration with the noted silversmith and jewelry designer, Peter Muller-Munk,
eventually evolved into the manufacture of "designer" lines
of desk and office accessories and accoutrements. In fact, many Smith
Metal Arts products in an Art Deco motif or with the SMA Silver Crest
remain collector's items today. In the 1950's the company was purchased by William Donaldson, who, through collaboration with Skidmore, Owings
and Merrill, designed a line of accessories known as
the "202 Mirror Aluminum" series. This series became the de-facto standard architectural
and design specification for almost every contemporary office in the United
States, and remains on permanent display at the Museum of Modern Art in
New York City. In more recent years, Donaldson collaborated with noted designer
William Sklaroff, to develop, among other beautiful
accessory collections, the highly acclaimed Radius One line of metal desk accessories. This line, which provided the inspiration for the Smith Metal Arts logo, remains a popular and integral
part of our product line to this day.
McDonald Products was also founded in Buffalo, NY, in 1930, by Edward McDonald, a metalworker, upon his purchase of the Serv-A-Light Co., a developer
of smoker stands with attached battery-operated cigar lighters. With his
background in metalworking, he led the company in their development of
a wide variety of ornamental smoking stands, pipe racks, humidors, ash trays, floor
stands, and a silent butler, which they marketed and sold primarily to
gift shops. In 1934, Mr. McDonald put a small duck finger lever on top
of his scissor-action ashtray, thus giving birth to what became one of
the company's most well-known products, the Duk-It ashtray. In fact, the
Duck icon, which originated from that specific group of products, eventually
became the symbol for McDonald Products, and remains an integral part
of our logo to this day. Despite the success and enduring popularity of
the Duk-It ashtray however, the honors for arguably the most well-known product
that McDonald Products ever offered fall to the Bean Bag Ashtray,
which at one time, was sold at the rate of over one million units per
year. Upon the sale of the company in 1961 to Adrian Bennett, the company
shifted its focus from gift shops - which tended to be somewhat seasonal
- to a more office-oriented product line. This shift in focus led to McDonald
Products developing their own assortment of Metal and Plastic desk accessory
lines, and in fact, Smith Metal Arts and McDonald Products were fierce competitors
for many years. Over the next several years, ownership of McDonald Products
changed hands several times, including a short stint as a wholly owned
subsidiary of the Insilco Corporation, a Fortune 500 firm then headquartered
in Meriden, CT. In 1982, a group of McDonald Products executives acquired
the company back from Insilco in a leveraged buyout, and finally in June, 1986,
controlling interest was acquired by Smith Metal Arts, which eventually led to the formation of Smith McDonald Corporation.
This comprehensive catalog is the result of many years of designing and manufacturing timeless, yet classic desk and office accessories for the contract furniture market. We are pleased to continue to offer the highest quality in both material and in workmanship, and look forward to being of service to you.
Call us today: 1-800-753-8548 or E-mail us: info@smithmcdonald.com
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Copyright ® 2013 | Smith McDonald Corporation | All Rights Reserved
Smith McDonald Corporation, 1270 Niagara Street, Buffalo, NY 14213
Phone: 1-800-753-8548 or E-mail: info@smithmcdonald.com