Atkinson, William

Liverpool; cabinet maker (fl.1796–1840)

App. to Edward Lowe and admitted freeman on 25 May 1796. Trading at 1 Derby St in 1804 and 58 Preston St, 1813–14. By 1818 he had obtained premises in Leigh St. These were numbered 11 (1818), 12 (1821–24 and 1835–37), 27 (1827– 34) and 25 (1839). Addresses are also shown in Peter St (1824–39), Blake St (1834) and Williamson Sq. (1837). He is listed in a supplement to the Liverpool Cabinet and Chair Prices, 1805, on behalf of the journeymen. His apps included William Spencer in 1818 and Henry Harrison and John Hatton in 1825. Amongst his products were billiard tables which were of a sufficient quality for one to be listed by the maker in an auction advertisement in February 1820. He is known to have collaborated with George Bullock and might well have been the ‘Atkinson’ noted as purchaser of eight lots in Bullock’s stock in trade sale, 1819. His son William Greenhalgh Atkinson was admitted freeman of Liverpool on 28 July 1840.

Source: DEFM; Levy, ‘George Bullock's Partnership with Charles Fraser, 1813-1818, and the Stock-in-Trade Sale, 1819’, Furniture History (1989)