Furniture & Furniture Makers
For more information and illustrations relating to timber see also Building Materials - Builders and Wood Yards
Up to the 1950s there were a lot of small furniture making firms, when my parents married in 1951 one of their wedding presents was a set of wardrobes and a dressing table made by a local firm. Furniture making (from wood) is a highly skilled occupation, I once sailed with an engineer who originally trained as a furniture maker, the training he had received covered most aspects of his later job as an instrumentation engineer. Most firms were small family businesses and the middle-sized firms tended to specialise (one might make chairs, another chests of drawers) whilst larger firms would offer a range of goods. The small firms tended to make goods to order, so you could have something made to fit your home at no extra cost.
The furniture makers would buy-in tree trunks and cut the wood themselves, a skilled joiner or cabinet maker would mark the logs for cutting so they could use the natural run of the grain for decorative purposes. The sketch below is based on a photograph taken in a furniture makers yard. The yard had a heft gantry crane to lift the logs onto the pile, they were transferred onto small-wheeled trolleys to be marked and taken to the saw.
Fig ___ Marking up a timber baulk for cutting
By the later 1900s these firms, located in the towns and close to their customers, would be using either large band saws or circular saws to do the actual cut. The example shown below was used in a wood yard, but a similar machine might be used by the furniture makers, probably housed inside a shed.
Fig___ Circular saw as used in wood yards
To form the wood into bends it was cut to size then placed inside a steam chest, steam was run through the chest which had screw clamps to bend the wood to the required shape. Once bent in this way the wood remains bent even if it gets wet. If bending an awkward shape the wood could be steamed then taken out of the chest and bent on a frame, this had to be done quickly because as the wood cooled it regained its stiffness.
Equipment in the factory would include machines for planning, mortising, jointing, dovetailing, moulding, turning and carving. Traditional cabinet makers would do all this with hand tools, but for bulk production machinery was necessary to make standard parts that were designed to fit rather than made to fit. Wood machinists could produce furniture parts for making sideboards, bedsteads, cabinets and chest-of-drawers. These parts were then assembled by the ‘traditional’ cabinet makers , the glue used was made by boiling up bones in a pot (very smelly but very strong).
Once the item was complete it was taken to the staining and polishing shop, for mass produced furniture it was common to spray on the stain by the 1930s and then simply spray on a lacquer finish. For more up market items the stain might be sprayed but the polish was applied by hand, in several layers. For hospitals and the like a white enamel paint finish was applied, again using a spray.
The 'iron bedstead' became popular around 1900 but these often featured curved wooden head and foot boards and a factory might reasonably undertake to supply these in some numbers to the bed making firm.
In the 1930s plywood was the new wonder material, although the glue used to make it was still a tad problematic (during World War Two the British produced successful aircraft like the Mosquito, built in furniture factories, but the Germans were dogged by glue failure in their aircraft production). Prior to World War Two plywood furniture was expensive, avant guard and not terribly popular with the general public but some firms used it in quantity, supplied in sheets 8 feet long by four feet wide. By the 1950s the glues were up to standard and new (cheaper) sheet materials gained in popularity, notably 'chip board' (wood shavings set in a resin glue) and 'block board' (small pieces of planed wood glued together like paving and skinned either side with ply). These materials did not require a skilled craftsman and by the 1970s firms such as G-Plan were selling a range of largely machine made and somewhat rectangular furniture using chipboard covered with a wood veneer sheet to provide a 'wood effect'.
This stuff is fine (although quality varies considerably between makes) but it will not last as long as furniture made in the traditional way by craftsmen, it does have one big advantage in that it will not warp if it dries out (hence its popularity in centrally heated homes). By the 1990s the flat slab-sided appearance of the chipboard furniture was less popular and no longer fashionably 'modern' so some firms set up making reproduction furniture using soft woods such as pine, covered with a wood veneer to provide the desired finish.
Modelling a furniture factory
The main attraction of a furniture factory in the present context is the opportunity to run in bolster wagons, this in turn requires a substantial crane to off-load the tree trunks. The example sketched below was photographed in a furniture factory yard in about 1910. Note the truss rods below the bridge, similar to those on long bogie railway wagons and the iron rod from the bridge drive wheel on the left to a gear on the right so the wheels at both ends of the bridge are turned to move the bridge. There was a timber cross member between the two sides at the near end as well as the far end on the photo, this was omitted from the sketch for clarity.
Fig ___ Wooden gantry crane at a furniture factory
Once cut the wood has to stand to 'season', stacked with short lengths of small timber to separate the layers and allow air to circulate (if the log were left to dry in one piece it dried unevenly would often split).
Fig___ Stacked cut tree trunks in 1942
The cut trunks would be a bit fiddly to produce in 'N', one option is to build up laminates of 20 thou card, or strips of post card, with scraps of the same forming the battens between the 'slices'. The inner part would be cream coloured but the bark would still be on the outer edges of each 'slice'. Making these is very time consuming and personally I would simply assume the wood had already been further cut into planks.
They would also receive cut and seasoned planks, the sketch below left is based on a photo of a furniture makers yard around the time of the First World War and shows planks apparently being loaded onto a timber carriage, possibly to be taken to another yard to season. Adding a timber carriage reinforces the wood-related scene. Note the workmen wearing long aprons, the chap handling the horse has an empty sack folded over his belt as an apron. The empty carriage is shown below right.
Fig___ Timber carriage being loaded and empty
One standard piece of kit was the cyclone dust catcher mounted on the roof of the woodworking shop, invented in the later 19th century these became common in the 1930s (they are more fully discussed in the section 'Lineside Industries - Prototype industrial ancillary structures'). The sketch below is based on a real factory building, the cyclone is mounted on a rectangular brick tower to the left of the picture, in which the dust is collected.
Fig ___ Furniture factory main workshop
In this example the cutting room is at the far end of the building, hence the long pipe feeding the cyclone. The cyclone and collecting tower are located next to the boiler house and the dust may have been used as fuel for the boiler (this is based on a real building but I am not sure of the details). The wood went in at the far end (the brown sliding doors) and the finished goods emerged at the near end (the black hinged doors).
The main workshops were generally a long narrow building with windows on both sides to provide a good working light and possibly roof lights as well. A common arrangement at larger works was to have a series of these workshops arranged in a row jutting out from a narrow connecting building like the teeth on a comb, sometimes the inner walls were whitewashed or clad in white glazed brick to increase the light going in through the many windows.
In the sketch below the main workshop is shown as a single building having an angled roof,The cutting shed would house the circular saw, the tall building behind it houses the boiler, steam chests and other cutting machines, the upper floors serve for stores. The narrow building on the right is where the polishing takes place, the large building far right has a show room opening onto the road. Not shown are the chimneys, there would be a few of these, single square stacks above the workshop and a larger chimney on the showroom and main building.
Fig ___ Small furniture factory
Most of these smaller furniture factories were not exactly mass producing goods and hence a rail connection was not common, however a little modellers licence, and perhaps a contract to supply furniture for the line itself, can be used to justify a single siding.
Traffic inwards would include the above mentioned bolsters carrying tree trunks, there would be coal for the steam boiler (the steam was used to shape the wood) and occasional vans carrying polishes, glues and equipment. If your model represents one side of a larger works you can also justify the occasional tank wagon, probably from a 'chemical' company, delivering varnish and/or thinners.
Outgoing would be vans carrying the finished goods. The plywood and chip-board furniture that came in during the later 1930s and immediate post war era would generate rather more van traffic both inwards and outwards.
If space allows you can have a larger factory, the sketch below is loosely based on the Risboro' Furniture Ltd. factory at High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire (see under Notable furniture manufacturers below for a link to an informative and well illustrated website). There is a siding feeding the timber to the saw mill (D).
The gantry crane (E) extends into the saw mill shed itself, which has no walls. The cut timber is stacked to weather in the yard and in the timber shed (C).
Fig ___ Timber storage shed
The timber is then carried into the factory (B), a large single storey building with a northlight roof, which has its own siding for loading the products onto railway vans for shipment. The offices (A) are a brick built two or three storey building. The track plan as shown allows for a passenger station, with one platform hemmed in by the works.
Fig ___ Large furniture factory
Notable furniture manufacturers
A lot of furniture was locally made up to the 1950s, there were however some 'national' brands.
Goodearl Brothers Ltd and Goodearl-Risboro' Ltd. was based at High Wycombe from the 1870s, they also operated a second factory in Northern Ireland from 1915. The firm closed down in 2001 but has since re-opened as Whiteleaf Ltd. There is an excellent website, with lots of pictures, at
http://www.petergoodearl.co.uk/laceygreen/prisboro/risbfurn/agbhist.htm
I cannot make this a live link as it complicates downloading this site for burning onto a CD, I'm afraid you will have to cut and paste the link. The site is full of information and photos, well worth a visit if considering building a furniture works for a layout.
Parker Knoll is a long established company, set up my Mr Parker in the 1870s, initially working in a small 'loft' workshop in East London. He researched older styles of furniture and rediscovered several techniques that had fallen from use, this allowed him to produce distinctive chairs and his business was a success. He moved to successively larger premises, ending up at High Wycombe and his company, Frederick Parker and Sons Ltd, was registered in 1904, producing hand made sofas and chairs. Meanwhile, in Stuttgart, Germany, a Mr Willi Knoll had developed a new form of coil spring for use in furniture (legend has it that in the First World War, a German fighter pilot, fed up with the uncomfortable seat in his fighter, got hold of some short coil springs and used them as the base for a more comfortable seat). In 1931 Mr Parker met with Mr Knoll at the British Industries Fair and the firm of Parker Knoll was set up to make chairs using Mr Knoll's springs. This new system proved popular, in the early 1930s Parker Knoll were selected to provide the furniture for the Queen Mary ocean liner - the biggest luxury passenger liner of its time. By the end of the 1930s the firm was making a thousand chairs a week. In the early 1960s Parker Knoll opened a new factory in Chipping Norton to produce their new range of 'reclining chairs', an arm chair that could be lowered back without the occupant getting out of it, and this again proved a great success (although designs dating back to the 1930s remain the most popular in their range).
Ercol was set up in the 1920s at High Wycombe (at the time the chair making capital of England). They were able to draw on the abundant supplies of timber from the Chiltern beech woods that surrounded them and mastered the art of steam-bending the wood to form pleasing shapes and forms.
Fig ___ Ercol paste-on label for BR era vans or containers
Harris Lebus was at the start of the 20th century the largest furniture making firm in the world, the company’s history began in the early 1840s when a cabinet-maker called Louis Lebus came to Britain from Germany. He settled in Hull, moving to London in 1857. By the 1890s his firm became the largest furniture manufacturer in Britain and in the first years of the 20th century the firm moved out to a new factory on a roughly 300 acre site in semi-rural Tottenham. The first order at the new factory was for 1000 satin walnut chests of drawers, other commonly produced goods included mahogany wardrobes with matching bedside cabinets, and walnut veneerer dining room suites.
The site was close to a Great Eastern Railway line, providing a distribution channel into the country but as far as I can tell it was not rail connected. Most of the timber was imported via London docks (the factory was on the bank of the River Lea), square edged lumber from the USA, soft wood such as pine from the Baltic. The wood was unloaded manually and taken to a field to 'season' (there were also drying kilns and sheds on the site), narrow gauge railway lines were laid through the area and horse drawn wagons were used to move the timber to the works. In the 1930s tarmac roads were built to replace the narrow gauge system. There was a slaughterhouse next door, where as well as slaughtering and butchering the animals (horses as well as cattle) they boiled up the animal bones to make glues.
In the post war era many furniture firms turned to mass production, using plywood, particle board or chip board to make furniture, which allowed them to use machines for the cutting of the pieces and less skilled staff for assembly and finishing. During the 1960s Harris Lebus went into a decline, outsold by the likes of G-Plan and Schreiber, and the factory closed in 1969 (the site is now a housing estate).
G-Plan One Ebenezer Gomme set up his furniture making business in 1898 in the town of High Wycombe, in 1952 he introduced the G-Plan range of furniture (I believe they went on sale in 1953). The furniture was designed to be 'modern' in appearance and made extensive use of new materials such as plywood and chipboard, covered in wood veneer to give the desired final finish. The furniture was made in a number of matching ranges, allowing customers to buy their furniture one piece at a time and build up a matching suite. Although the new materials have since developed a poor reputation the G-Plan furniture was aimed at the higher end of the market, made to high standards with better quality materials and many of the original pieces are still in service today.
The first G Plan range was called 'Brandon' and had a light oak finish, G-Plan later benefited from the fashion for teak, Scandinavian style furniture. The firm claim many 'firsts', the first to introduce modular furniture that could be assembled in various ways, the first to introduce flip action extending dining tables and the first to put stops on cutlery drawers to prevent them (and their contents) from being spilled onto the floor. The company 'went public' in the later 1950s and in 1987 the Gomme family sold the business to the then directors, in 1990 the firm was sold to the Christie Tyler group of companies and in 1996 the Morris Furniture Group acquired the licence to make and market G Plan Cabinet furniture from its state of the art facilities in Glasgow. It has since developed and extended the range and (at the time of writing) seems to be doing well.
Schriber Furniture This firm were another of the post-war 'modern' furniture makers. Chaim Schreiber escaped from Nazi Germany in World War Two. He started in business making radio cabinets for Dansette and other larger electrical manufacturers, with the profits he made from radio cabinets he bought the bankrupt furniture maker, Lubetkin. He scrapped the name and made his own furniture under the Schriber brand. By 1967, he was challenging Lebus and Gomme (G-Plan)for domination of the furniture market. In the 70s, Schreiber introduced furniture centres, taking complete control of distribution, as well as manufacture. After economic problems in the mid-seventies and a merger with GEC, the Company continued to be one of the biggest names in British furniture in the 70s (by which time Schreiber had an established reputation at the cheaper end of the furniture market). The main reason for his success in the early 1970s was his manufacturing skills, unlike G-Plan he never employed a designer but copied and adapted other designs. Gomme of G-Plan fame was a master of design, Schreiber a master of price, whereas G-Plan had a wood veneer finish Schriber often used patterned or 'wood effect' plastic.
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