The name came from a what’ll-we-call-it session between Sydney and Frances, who concluded that there couldn’t be anything better than best.Īrt Nouveau triumphs by Hector Guimard, who did Paris Metro entrances. Eleven million catalogs were mailed, keyed to a network of 200 stores in 28 states total showroom space is more than 5.7 million square feet, with that much again in warehouse space. The orders came, eventually in flood proportions. It was started as a mail-order operation in 1957 with a catalog printing of 1,000 and a warehouse from which to respond to hoped for orders. The beginning of Best Products Co., Inc., couldn’t have been more modest, the success more monumental. Their ability to do so has been fueled by the fantastic success at their showroom catalog enterprise, Best Products. They kind of now together.” The Lewises are something of a down-home Medici family, keen on bringing the latest expressions of culture to the public. A longtime friend of the Lewises putsit this way: “ SydneyandFrances is definitely one word. Interviewing the Lewises together at home or in their offices at corporate headquarters, one grows accustomed to getting compound answers to single questions. for furnishing our house, like everyone else around here with 18th century English furniture, buying at auction, mostly in England. Lewis challenges with the arch of an eyebrow, “but we started collecting. absolutely,” and charges seamlessly into the conversation. Lewis.”īefore his next sentence emerges, Frances Lewis affirms “Absolutely. “I was intrigued by those lines,” recalls Sydney Lewis of that first piece of Art Nouveau bought at auction. And into an accumulation of art that would ultimately require a new wing back home at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. At the time they had no idea their spontaneous purchase would lead them into an entirely new field in their more than 20-year bout of collecting fever. In the early 1960s, Sydney and Frances Lewis of Richmond, Virginia, attended an auction in New York with their friend painter Theodore Stamos and bought-at Stamos’ urging-an anonymous French chest and a pair of side chairs. Sydney and Frances Lewis, at right Frank Stella paintingĪfter a tentative start some 25 years ago, the Richmond couple, founders of Best Products, gained momentum and expertise.