Blake Lackey’s coworkers have described him as upbeat, courteous, and a “genuinely kind and conscientious young man.” Unsurprisingly, Blake—a product engineering technician at Ethan Allen’s Pine Valley plant in Old Fort, North Carolina—doesn’t take himself too seriously.

The work that Blake does is an integral part of the Ethan Allen story. He says he’s a “middleman,” but his role is more complex than that. It’s his job to deconstruct a product idea and plan out its manufacture. “We take a model from the design group at our corporate headquarters and break it into manufactured pieces,” he explains. “We then create the machinery necessary to make those pieces.” Once manufactured, the furniture parts are also assembled at the plant, so Blake and his associates witness the entire process as it unfolds—“from design plan to finished piece.” (more…)

Trend alert! Décor that features mythological creatures gets its moment to shine—and we’re slayed by how beautifully it coordinates with a variety of styles! (more…)

Alec Waters is standing in the 30,000-square-foot Ethan Allen photo studio in New Milford, CT, telling secrets: He’s revealing his part in making beautiful rooms come to life. Today, a photographer is shooting down from a loft space, camera fixed on a podium, aimed at a raised platform below, where an area rug lies perfectly flat, under lighting that is perfectly even. Alec explains how they built the platform to facilitate shooting the heavy rugs (and rigged it to fold up against the wall when not in use).

Another day. Another problem solved. (more…)

You could call it serendipity. But that would only be part of Carolina Pascua’s story. Indeed, Pascua was in the right place at the right time when Ethan Allen ventured into Honduras in early 2011 to explore the possibility of opening a manufacturing plant there. (more…)