Charles Webster & Co made looking glasses and picture frames at Sewardstone Road (c1910).
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whilst timber merchants, glue makers, japanners, and brass dealers supplied the furniture makers.
n their book, ‘Furnishing the
World’, Pat Kirkham, Rodney Mace and Julia Porter shine a light on the cabinet makers, upholsterers and French polishers working in the East End.
Although a male dominated industry, women worked as upholsterers and French polishers. Women’s lower wages were seen as a threat by most men in a highly cutthroat world. So too was the entrance of Jewish workers, who came to London in the 1880s.
By 1870, Bethnal Green and Shoreditch had become the heartland of furniture production in London – mainly making cheaper furniture that went into working class homes and the ‘middling’ type of middle class houses.
A Parliamentary Enquiry in 1888, however, found that the root of the trade’s problems was not women or Jewish workers undercutting costs, but the subdivision of tasks and labour.
A ‘sweated’ trade East End furniture making was characterised by small workshops set up with little capital. It was a classic ‘sweated trade, based upon low wages and long hours, utilising unskilled labour and sub-contracting, with little trade union organisation.
The industry declined in the 20th century but wander around Bethnal Green and you’ll still see old furniture workshops in Padbury Court, Gibraltar Walk, the Boundary and Winkley Estates. And, who knows, you might even pick up a locally-made tallboy or tea caddy at Brick Lane market.
Cabinet making, fancy cabinet making, chair making, carving, gilding, and upholstery were all undertaken – 12