“My dad’s idea of a family vacation was visiting historic communities like Deerfield and Sturbridge, Massachusetts, or Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia,” recalls Michael Krauss, owner of Authentic Designs, a family-run business that specializes in manufacturing colonial-era reproduction lighting fixtures. “He was always searching for design inspiration while renovating our 1820s farmhouse in Great Neck, Long Island.” Fifty years later, Michael—along with partner Maria Peragine—carries the same torch of persistence, but from the rural vistas of Rupert, Vermont, where they have settled since relocating from Manhattan in 1989.
“The metropolis is very different from the country in that people don’t have to care,” explains Michael. “But out here it’s like one big extended family where people help each other; where ‘paying it forward’ is very prevalent. This same attitude extends into our business as much as possible, where need is shared in a constructive, non-using way.”
It was Abe Flam, an accomplished metal artisan and Michael’s teacher, who instilled such axioms of wisdom during Michael’s five-year apprenticeship in back plating and sheet-metal work. “He left Vienna in 1939, before Hitler invaded Austria, eventually making his way to New York to start over with nothing but a positive attitude.” Michael’s father, Daniel Krauss, partnered with Flam in the 1970s and later decided to relocate the reproduction lighting business from Manhattan to an old toothpick mill in southwestern Vermont.