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Bath Cabinet Makers Ltd (1892-1939)

Bath Cabinet Makers Ltd

Bath, Somerset & London; furniture designers, makers & retailers (fl.1892-1939)

In 1892 the firm was established as a result of a strike at the Bath furniture manufacturing firm of Norris & Co. Founded by the artist, Charles A. Richter, and his brother, Henry D. Richter, it was a cooperative where all the workers were encouraged to take up shares.

At first small workshops were established in various parts of Bath. With the financial support of many of Bath’s prominent people, a new large and well equipped factory for Bath Cabinet Makers was built on Bellots Road, Twerton-on-Avon, in 1895. An oak cabinet designed by H.D. Richter and made by the Company was exhibited at the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, London, 1899 (cat. no. 469). About 1900 a showroom was opened at 5 Berners Street, London. In that same year the firm became Bath Cabinet Makers Ltd and also received gold and silver prizes from the Paris Exhibition. Two early sideboards by the firm are illus. Agius (1978), p. 90. They also exhibited at the 1902 Budapest Exhibition. Most of the work for a large private house commission in 1901 was carried out ‘in the style of the Adams brothers’. Two projects were illustrated in 1907 Studio Yearbook of Decorative Arts; one was the Drawing Room in the Arts & Crafts manner at Cresthill, Bath, and the second a five-sided display cabinet. H. D. Richter designed many of the early projects. After the First World War the firm embraced new materials and using designers such as J. P. Hully and furnished state rooms on various ocean liners.

In the early 1920s another building was acquired on Lower Bristol Road and this branch was called Bath Artcrafts Company. With over 220,000 square foot, over 47,000 of this was the woodworking area in this new building. The furniture manufacturing areas were supplied with solid and veneer woods in natural, weathered and sandblasted fine and exotic woods by the subsidiary, Bath Timber Supply Company.

The firm displayed a highboy chest of drawers and a boot cupboard in the 1925 Paris International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts and in 1927 illustrated twelve of its best designed and executed pieces in the Furnishing Trades' Organiser.

In the 1920s and 1930s the company ran the Bath Guild of Handicraft Designs (School of Handicrafts, Tapestry & Design), whose workshops gave employment to local women and to students of the Bath Technical College. During these two decades the firm displayed its furniture at their London show rooms at 33 Great Pulteney Street. They also supplied bedroom suites to Heal’s, Tottenham Court Road, from 1905-1936 (this comprised one particular design in 1905, 1910, 1925 then eight different designs in 1930 and one in 1936). In 1929 they produced all the furniture and wall panelling for the deluxe suites on the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company's Empress of Britain, and in 1930-36, panelling and furnishing for the main lounge, staterooms and bedrooms de luxe of RMS Queen Mary. From 1930-32 they worked on a commission from Oswald Milne, designer, to produce the bedroom furniture for the refurbished bedrooms on the seven floors around the open court at Claridge's Hotel. The bedroom suite usually comprised a desk and chair, dressing table and chair, and luggage stool.

Bath Cabinet Makers were the makers of an inlaid sideboard, made of burr and figured walnut, coromandel and satinwood, that was sold at Bonhams, Knowle, 1 November 2011.  

Sources: Arts & Crafts Exhibition catalogue, 1899; Agius, British Furniture 1880-1915 (1978); Payne, ‘Bath Cabinet Makers’, The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the Present (1981); Bennett, Shapland & Peter Ltd of Barnstaple.  Arts & Crafts Furniture (2005); Heal, Sir Ambrose Heal and the Heal Cabinet Factory 1897-1939 (2014).