Beresford & Hicks (1891-1995)
Beresford & Hicks
Hemsworth Street & Curtain Road, London; furniture manufacturers (fl.1891-1995)
Julius B. Wiszniewski was a piano maker from Dantzig (then part of Prussia, now Poland) who came to London in the 1870s and met Richard Hicks who married Wiszniewski’s sister in 1875. At some stage he took the name of Julius Beresford and with his brother in law formed Beresford & Hicks in 1891 with a factory in Hemsworth Street, Hoxton, and a showroom in Curtain Road, Shoreditch. By 1918 they were known as ‘manufacturing upholstering and framemakers’ with a large showroom at 135-139 Curtain Road. The firm supplied bedroom suites to Heal’s, Tottenham Court Road; this comprised one particular design in 1905 and three in 1936. The firm was also known for making high quality upholstered goods and English reproduction furniture of all types and supplied furniture to the Royal Family in 1933. Production grew to include high quality modern boardroom furniture and it was granted a royal warrant in 1958, with Jack Beresford, the son of Julius, named as the grantee. In 1967 the Hemsworth Street factory was purchased by the Greater London Council and a new factory was built in Kings Lynn. About this time the firm merged with another old-established but ailing firm, Alfred Cox of Corsham Street, to produce mainly domestic furniture. The firm was acquired by Uniflex in 1972 but ceased to exist in 1995.
Sources: Massil, Immigrant Furniture Workers in London 1881-1939 (1997); Heal, Sir Ambrose Heal and the Heal Cabinet Factory 1897-1939 (2014).
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