OUR HISTORY
Artis Metals Company has been in business since 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression. Our founder, Samuel W. Artis, moved his family from Florissant, MO all the way out West to Idaho in 1930.
Sam worked as a tin knocker in Missouri and fell in love with the West. In a freight car, he moved the contents of 2 shops and a 12 room house, then traveled by two trucks, a 1928 Rickenbacker Car and a 1930 Model A Ford to Idaho.
The watershed moment for Artis Metals came when Sam and his oldest son Edward Joseph invented a new design for a chimney cap that prevented downdrafts from backing up smoke and soot in stoves. Additionally, they invented a leak proof extension product which affixed the chimney cap to tile or brick chimneys. These products broke into national distribution and catapulted the Company into a nationally recognized specialty sheet metal manufacturer. They later obtained patents for the Artis Vacuum Cap in 1940 and the Artis Leakproof Chimney Extension in 1942.
The original major customers of Artis Metals Company were the Coleman Stove Company, which placed the caps on its oil burning stoves, and the US Military. As WWII broke out, the US military bought thousands of Artis Vacuum Caps to help keep our soldiers warm in Quanset huts across the US and the world where they were deployed.
In the years following the war, Sam’s four sons continued the tradition of innovation and growth and as the HVAC industry evolved, Artis Metal Company followed suit. The Company began designing and manufacturing sheet metal products beyond chimney and stove products to include exhaust vents for appliances, roof ventilators, and other accessory items needed in the developing American consumer markets.
