Howland Tools located in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts in the foothills of the Berkshires, is your source for premium quality hand tools imported from Europe.
Over our years of gardening, woods work, and land maintenance, we have often been frustrated by the low quality and poor design of the majority of hand tools commonly available. Many of these are so poorly designed that they make doing work by hand seem an unreasonable task, in addition to wearing out far earlier than they should.
We discovered that there are still a few manufacturers in Europe that make tools of a very high quality and excellent design. In Europe, hand tools have remained economically important for far longer than in the United States, partly due to a longer persistence of smaller farms. This means that these tools have been designed and manufactured for people whose livelihoods depend on their use. Many of these companies have been in production for hundreds of years. The result is a tool that has the potential to last more than a lifetime, and do its job well all the while.
We want to make these tools available to gardeners and small farmers, so that they to can see the potential of hand tools. Though the price tag on these tools is higher than at the hardware store, we believe they will save you money in the long run, and certainly hassle. Most of these tools are easily re-handled, which makes their potential life span much greater. We stock handles for most of our tools, and will re-handle and service tools.
Shelby Howland
