To Fur, With Love: America's Oldest Furrier - Softcover

Part memoir and part manifesto, To Fur, with Love introduces readers to the family behind America’s oldest furrier and treats them to an expert’s exploration of the real meaning, value, and means of acquiring true luxury goods.

Beginning with a transatlantic journey and an unlikely friendship between a former Union solider and a young German boy on his way to the New World, this book not only chronicles the creation and growth of the legendary Mano Swartz Furs, it also documents issues of great social importance.

As author Richard Swartz details with tremendous insight, wit, and intelligence how his great-grandfather built and ran his company over 125 years ago, he provides a valuable example of how it’s possible to use position and power to create positive change—even in the face of discrimination and death.

Swartz also engages readers in a critical examination of our culture’s willingness to equate an expensive price tag with luxury—and makes a strong argument for the need to discern what luxury really means and how to identify it. Compounding this history, philosophy, and social commentary further, Swartz also shares practical advice for buying, updating, and maintaining furs.

Richard Swartz is the president of Mano Swartz Furs and a fourth-generation furrier. He began his career in fur at age ten, working with his grandfather, Jimmie, on Saturdays on Howard Street.

Swartz's fur education continued during summer breaks from high school and college. After graduating from the University of Vermont, his family sent him to Copenhagen to study at the side of one of Europe's most prominent master furriers, A. C. Bang. When word from Denmark reached Swartz’s father, Mano, that Swartz had become a bona fide master furrier, Mano welcomed him home to Baltimore to join the family business.

Swartz’s business education includes lessons learned at family dinners and small business courses at the Wharton School.