It has been a policy of Regional Furniture, over
the past eighteen years, to print important specialist material that
would not be of interest to mainstream commercial publishers.
Cabinet and Chair Makers' Books of Prices have been a major focus of
this effort and price books for Glasgow and Whitehaven have now been
reproduced in complete form. Excerpts from the chair makers'
part of the Norwich Cabinet and Chairs Makers' Book of Prices
were reprinted in Regional Furniture volume II (1988).
These ventures have succeeded in providing exposure of local
characteristics of both common and up market furniture from the
regions and have been used keenly by students and writers on our
subject.
Although Regional Furniture has printed some
introductory lists of craftsmen from defined areas (for instance;
Edinburgh and Aberdeen), this is the first full Dictionary of
furniture makers from a particular region to be published by the
Society. The author of this Dictionary of Norfolk Furniture
Makers, Dr John Stabler, makes full acknowledgement of the
accomplishment of the Dictionary of English Furniture Makers (1986),
indeed, he made a major contribution to the research for that epic
publication , but he will be amongst the first to admit that such an
undertaking could only be a beginning in the process of mapping our
regional furniture makers. A study of a microcosm, in this case
the rather large English county of Norfolk, using more extensive
sources, and with plates illustrating the trade cards, bills,
inscribed marks and examples of furniture by the makers themselves,
must give a deeper insight into a region's furniture and the dynasties
of men and women who made it, thus continuing the work that the DEFM
began.
The once exceedingly wealthy and populous county of
Norfolk established a strong furniture personality at a relatively
early date; Society member Anthony Wells Cole has made a study of that
personality in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Regional
Furniture volume IV, 1990). Norfolk was prosperous, with a
developed consumer culture, but far enough away from other areas of
the UK to remain mysterious to many people. Therefore, it makes
an excellent subject for this debut regional Dictionary.
The fresh information in the dictionary's biographical entries will
have a diverse appeal; we can find, for example, who was making 'India
backed' chairs in 1740, information about an 'election chair' of 1829,
the meaning of the word 'Tristram' and the identity of the man who
gilded Holkham Hall's Palladian glazing bars between 1810-11.
This Dictionary is not simply a list of furniture makers, but a
fascinating, living story of an evolving community of interconnected
characters, their families and their frequently unruly apprentices.
It is also perhaps the only publication where Elizabeth Taylor and
Robinson Cruso are able to rub shoulders.
David Jones
