alex gossip

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A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of Warwick
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The Furniture Workers from Craft to Industrial Union
1865 1972
New Reid
Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
June 1982
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to place on record the depth of gratitude that
I owe to the very many individuals and institutions, in the
preparation of this work. To Ben Hubner Kooyman of
and Jim
?AT for making the Union records available to me and their
unfailing support and encouragement. Also to members of the
Union, both serving and retired who have given unstintingly
of their time to talk through and explain incidents in the
Union's past.
I acknowledge Also the assistance given to me by the
Library staff of the Modern Records section, Warwick
University, the P.B.R. staff of the Bodlean Library,Oxford,
Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education Library,
Marx's Memorial Library, the archive staff of High Wycombe
Public Library, the Department of Employment Library and
the Newspaper Library, Colindale.
A great deal of effort was also undertaken on my behalf
by the P.R.O. and in particular Dr. Cox, to uncover the
Kew,
records of the smaller furniture unions, alas to no avail.
The search was continued through the good offices and
support of Mr. Drummond of the Certification office of the
Trades Union and Employers Association; however, the records
in question do appear to have been lost during the war
despite 'extensive and exhaustive' searches in the depository
at Hayes.
The staff of the T.U.C. Library were most helpful and
most cooperative in opening their files; it is a matter of
recorded regret, however, that access was flatly refused
to the Home Office and Metropolitan Police records on the
Union and its officers.
My thanks are particularly due to Mr Frank Hubner,
Dean of the School of Creative Art, Leeds Polytechnic,
for reading and correcting the first chapter of the work.
Above all,however, I must place on record my sincere
debt of gratitude to Professor Hoyden Harrison,
Dr, Tony Mason and Dr. Henry Weisser without whose contin-
ual encouragement, advice, and correction this work
would never have been completed.
Finally, my thanks to Mr. D.J.Everett, Principal,
and the Furniture Technology staff of Buckinghamshire
College of Higher Education, who made possible a
sabbatical year at Warwick University to complete the
first draft. The task of typing the history has been
splendidly performed by Mts. D. Rimber and Mrs Rene Reed.
In conclusion, this work that I have undertaken in
attempting to write a, history of this fiercely,
independently minded group of craftsmen has been a
source of joy and inspiration to me. I humbly acknowledge
my debt to the Furniture Workers.
MAIN ABBREVIATIONS USED
A.G. Alex Gossip
EX. Executive Committee
M.R. Monthly Report
A.R. Annual Report
G.M.C. General Management Committee
NAr-TA National Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Association
NUM National Union of Furniture Trades Operatives
FrAT Furniture Timber and Allied Trades (Union)
A.II.U. Amalgamated Union of Upholsterers
AMALGAMATIONS VITH ALLIANCE NAFTA AND NUFTO 1866 — 1972.
1872 East London Cabinetmakers Society
Fancy Cabinetmakers of London
1873 London Society of Continental Cabinet Makers
Amalgamated Society of Cabinet and Chair Makers (Manchester)
1874 East London United Society of Chair Makers and Carvers
Cabinet Makers Society of Sheffield (Cutlery Cabinets)
Manchester and District United Cabinet and Chair Makers Society
1875 Nottingham Local Cabinet & Chair Makers Society
1883 London Wood Carvers Society
1893 Photographic Cabinet Makers 1896 Liverpool Local Hebrew
Hebrew Cabinet Makers Cabinetmakers
Newcastle Polishers Local Society Glasgow Local Carvers
Society
1902 United Operative Cabinet and Chairmakers Society of Scotland
to form National Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Association
1903 National Plate Glass Bevellers Trade Union (defunct)
1908. South London French Polishers Society
1909 London Society of French Polishers
1910 Liverpool Local French Polishers Society
Manchester Local French Polishers Society
1911 Amalgamated Society of French Polishers
1911 Edinburgh Society of French Polishers
1912 London Stone Carvers Society
Liverpool Local Polishers Society
1916 Old West End Cabinetmakers Society
1918 United Furnishing Trades Union (Independent Hebrew Society)
Perseverance Cabinet Makers
London Piano Workers
1920 Glasgow Picture Frame Makers Society
London Japanners Trade Union
1927 Liverpool Union of Picture Frame Makers
1945 Edinburgh Union of Upholsterers
1947 Amalgamated Society of Cricket Ball Makers
Amalgamated Union of Upholsterers
General Union of Bedding Trade Workers
1954 National Union of Carpet, Linoleum and Rubber,Planners & Fitters
1969 Midlands Glass Bevellers & Kindred Societies
United French Polishers Society
1971 NUFTO & ASWCM join to form PTATU
The Furniture Makers - The First Beginnings
The History of the making of Furniture is inexorably tied to the
development and decline of the successive civilisations which have
given the punctuation to the story of man's emergance in a settled
society. In tracing the development of the Trade Unions in the
furniture industry it is necessary to provide as a postscript a brief
summary of furniture making through the ages, and its development in
the United Kingdom. Of necessity this history is not exhaustive, and
must needs take a partial view, but it is included in the main work
to set the scene for the emergance of the workers organisations in
the middle of the Victorian era.
It is a generally accepted truth that the making and use of
furniture is a characteristic of an advanced and settled society and
the earliest examples of this craft and trade in the Western World
were the products of the civilisationi of Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia,
Greece and Rome.
The tools and craftsmen to produce these articles had emerged in
the transitional Mesolithic (Middle Stone) Age during which a fine
range of carpenters tools, including the adze, gauge and chisel were
developed. That period Also added the carpenter's first machine - the
bow-drill, in which the drill is rapidly rotated by means of a string
wrapped round it, attached at each end to a sort of bow which is moved
back and forth. (i)
r
(i) S.Lilley "Men Machines and History" Iva
The Egyptians from early Dynastic times (about 2,700 B.C.) used
the bow drill as an integral part of their wood working technique.
Judging from the surviving wood work, they used neither nails nor
screws, almost everything being fitted together with wooden pins or
dowels and the drilling of an accurate hole for this was essential. (i)
By this period the craftsmen of Egypt and Mesopotamia were
producing a wide variety of articles of high aesiiketio and technical
quality. They were aided in this task by the skills of the metal
workers who were by this time capable of making tools as diverse as
axes, adzes, chisels, gauges, drills, knives, saws, clamps and razors.(ii)
The carpenter of this time was as versatile as he was skilled,
and his output ranged across boats, chariots, furniture and musical
instruments such as harps and lyres. Technical innovation was also
taking place and from this period comes the first evidence of the
construction of plywood, a, five-fly board of glued wood strips of great
strength and stability.
The objects of great beauty found in the tombs of the period
demonstrate the degree of refinement which these workers could attain
in catering for the luxury - in death as in life, of their rulers,
highlighting one salient factor which is central to the development
of the craft of furniture making, namely that for a very considerable
period of mans history the commissioning and use of furniture of
anything other than the most utilitarian was restricted to the ruling
groups in a society, invariably the most affluent most
and the
cultured. (iii)
i) Goodman LL. "The History of Woodworking Tools" 11,2 r TA
ii) Lilley or. ccr r "
iii) Lilley . p 4,1" p ....
I
The Greeks and Romans added to the range of wood working tools
available by developing the rule, the square, smoothing planes, jack
;lanes and moulding planes, as well as developing further in terms of
sophistication those tools already available.
It can be suggested that there exists a relationship between tool
development and furniture making Skills on the one hand and the cultural
development and the settled nature of society on the other, insofar as it
determines the type and kind of work the craftsman is called upon to do.
It can be deduced on the evidence available from archaeological
sites that the tool kit of the average Roman joiner in Rome or London
was more extensive and specialised than that of his medieval counterpart
in a small French or English village 1,000 years later. In these
Western European countries the making of furniture of any quality dates
from the Gothic period of architecture, when furnishing to match
ecclesiastical and fortified building was produced in monasteries.
Indeed, one of the oldest known pieces of British furniture is the
Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey, 'made for Edward I (1272 - 1307)
by the Monk, Walter of Durham. (i)
Furniture making requires a variety of separate skills which
eventually emerged as specific trades. The first of these separations
or division of skills to emerge were those of chairmaker, upholsterer
and bedding maker. The date of this separation is not clears however
it is apparent that by the 16th Century there was a declineation
between the work of the carpenter and joiner and that of the lUrniture
(i) Goodman b r CII-
.2-
maker into separate and clearly defined areas of work.
In the reign of Elizabeth I (1558 - 1603) the Norwich Indexes of
Freeman list upholsterers;abd chairmakers from 16140; and. chairmenders
from 1677. In Bristol the apprentices enrolled in the years 1662 and
1689 include upholsterers, and the first apprentice book of 1540 lists
an upholsterer and bedder. (i) (ii)
Cabinetmaking as such has a less clearly documented history until
the 1600's but this is more clearly understood if the furniture and
furnishings of the Early Tudor period are examined.
The schedule of the contents of the house of Sir William More
of Loseley are available for the year 1556. The most prominent feature
of the hall was the large chair of the master of the house, standing
upon a dias or raised platform at the top of the room. Before this
stood the high table, the table dormant of Chaucers Franklin. To one
side of the chair was a second and lesser one for the lady of the house
and guests and family were accommodated at the high table on stools.
At the lower end of the hall stood a hutch table, the Armoire, the
ancestor of the modern sideboard, acting as a serving table for the
household. Near the table stood the cup-board on which the appoint-
ments for the high table were kept. Either side of the fireplace were
high-backed benches, garnished as necessary with blankets and cushions
for comfort. (iii)
i) Norwich Index of Freemen1N. Public Library
ii) Bristol Archives Office
iii) "Medieval Furniture"; Penelope Eames, London 1977 f'''7"