Exquisite home décor begins with products that epitomize attention to detail and artistic subtleties that are often hard to manufacture in volume without looking mass-produced. For more than 55 years, Baldwin Hardware, part of the Stanley Black & Decker’s Hardware and Home Improvements (Stanley BDHHI) business, has conveyed elegance in decorative residential hardware, including doorknobs and complementary hardware.

Top-priced, hand-crafted doorknob sets often sell for $1,200 and require hand polishing to create their look of superior craftsmanship. Stanley BDHHI’s marketing team saw an opportunity for a new family of door hardware in its Estate product line, which is hardware with the hand-crafted look, produced at half the price through the innovative use of design and manufacturing technology. When Stanley BDHHI’s industrial design team first proposed the concept for what would become the new Couture collection to the company’s engineering group, the resounding response was, “No way; these designs aren’t doable in the time we have at the cost we need.”

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