Mabef Small Master Studio Easel with Crank (MBM-05) , Brown

I've only had it for 10 days. It is wonderful. I just looked at the other easels in the $400. range; now I can see why my choice was right. Italian craftsmanship supremo! So much easier to assemble than anything from Ikea. The crank 9wood&steel) handle slides on and off/out of your way {less expensive easels have a plastic crank}. This allows you to put what you are concentrating right at your eye level. This also causes less shoulder and neck stress when you spend many hours enjoying what you like to do the most. This is an edit: Now I've been using for a month. I love it. I hope I never have to go back to a non-crank easel. I have done some very vigorous rubbing and drawing on it. It is solid.

Choosing a Mabef easel (m/05) I thought I would have a solid easel to last a long time. It is built well- at least the wood looks like it. But almost all the hardware was missing from the box. After repeated attempts at communication, Mabef customer service asked which hardware was missing and then they went missing. Now two weeks of no response from Mabef, I am taking my hardware list to the local nut/bolt supply and try to find something that will work. I estimate I will be spending about $50. I spent over $800. for my easel- or should I say, I bought a pile of machined wood. My advise: choose another company.Finally- took about a month and my original hardware arrived. Had already put my new easel together with the replacement hardware I bought, but it was nice to put on the levers that I wasn't able to find. Never did hear back from customer service. Good easel, but bet I could have done better elsewhere.

I bought this not for art work but as a stand for a 43" Samsung "Frame" TV.It seems to work well for this purpose. In positioning the TV, it provides much more flexibility than the usual flush-mount wall bracket. The bottom shelf and the top bracket are just about the right depth (if anything, a little too deep, but that's better than too shallow). The height adjustment crank operates smoothly.It took maybe 45 minutes for me to unbox and assemble it (working alone and carefully). The factory packaging, in my opinion, was not nearly robust enough. The wooden parts had no shrink wrap, bubble wrap, or foam protection, only a single rather flimsy cardboard partition separating the main frame assembly from the leg and other parts. The hardware was double-bagged but the bags had several holes. Two hardware parts had fallen loose and were rattling around in the box. Fortunately, nothing appeared to be missing or broken. Assembly was quite easy, but some different hardware items looked deceptively similar. So when I got to the very last bolt, I found the washer was too small to fit because I had used the larger one already. So observe the bolt lengths and washer diameters carefully.The wood is finished with linseed oil, which quickly filled my living room with its aroma (which I find pleasant). Most wooden parts are solid beech; exceptions include some of the shelf parts and the bottom support flanges, which are plywood. The center mast and the top bracket mate nicely to the frame with sliding dovetail joints. The 4 casters are cheap plastic (rubber and steel with ball bearings would have been nice). The wheels themselves do not lock. Instead, you secure the whole shebang to the floor by tightening down on two rubber-tipped bolts. A little inconvenient, but effective.This is a good cut above Ikea quality. It needs to be, since unlike most Ikea furniture it has moving parts. I've seen some reviews that label it "expensive" but in my opinion it is fairly priced. If anything, some users might have preferred to spend $100 or so more on better packaging and better wheels (with locking ball-bearing casters). I think the handy drawers will break easily the first time they are pulled out too far and get dropped on a concrete floor. There are no drawer stops, and the drawer fronts are box-jointed solid wood (which might be a little more fragile than plywood for this purpose). In an earlier shipment I received (and returned), one of these drawer fronts was split horizontally. It looks to me as though the design, materials, and finish of this easel should tend to make repairs fairly easy (assuming basic carpentry skills.) I don't know how easy it is to order spare parts from Mabef, in case some of them are not standard off-the-shelf. Just don't lose the crank. Fortunately, it can fit in either storage drawer, if you want to get it out of the way.

This easel itself looks very nice, unfortunately I received one that is broken.