The Murray Feiss company grew out of the great changes affected in American labor-patterns caused by waves of immigrants at the turn of the century and America’s entry into the Second World War. Although only part of the story is told on the Murray Feiss website, Rose Feiss's job as a lampshade-sewer bore fruit in the postwar establishment and in the growth of this large lighting company.

Murray Feiss, “Home Fashion for Life” began as an importer of European figurines which were wired as lamp-bases. Business origins can still be discerned in the company’s table-lamp collections, which show particular attention given to details and form in the wide variety of distinctive lamp-bases offered.

Murray Feiss has taken a different approach from those of its industry-competitors to the combining of past and future in design, featuring collections by highly influential contemporary design-stylists Martha Stewart and Bob Mackie. The Stewart designs, intended to be used as part of her overall décor lines, tend to emphasize classic, clear lines and soft colors. Mackie’s lines, “Casbah,” “Marquee,” and “Villa Ribero” reflect the understanding of the difference between top and over-the-top that established him a treasured dress-designer to celebrities in theater and the arts. Mackie’s designs bring a “wow” factor to lighting without overwhelming other design elements in a room.

Feiss incorporates another understanding of how lighting works in its collection of decorator wall-mirrors. Anyone who has ever repeated the Colonial-age experiment of placing a candle in front of a mirror understands the logic of this addition. (For those who have not yet tried the experiment, light a candle in a dark room and see how much light it provides, not a lot. Now, place the same candle in front of a mirror. Instead of one candle, you see two. This perception seems a bit simple-minded until you turn around and see how much more light there now is in your room. Thank you, Benjamin Franklin.) Feiss’s mirrors contain design elements to coordinate with—and enhance the light of—their lighting fixtures.

Customers already familiar with Murray Feiss may show it by tilting their heads back and fixing their eyes on the ceiling; Feiss carries over 300 chandelier-style fixtures, in a variety of styles. It is very hard for a customer to leave this very large collection without finding something that suits their needs.

Feiss has responded to energy-saving concerns by establishing lines that meet industry and government Energy Star requirements. Outdoor lighting, lights that are part of ceiling fans and solar-powered lighting in a wide variety of designs explicitly meet Energy Star standards. Murray Feiss has grown greatly without forgetting its very American roots.