Beynon, George, William and David (1851-1923)
Beynon, George, William and David
Carmarthenshire, Wales; cabinet maker (fl.1851-1923)
George Beynon was recorded in the 1851 Census in the village of Llanddowror as a joiner and cabinet maker and in 1861 as a carpenter. He died in 1866 and his son William, aged 17, moved to St Clears where in 1871 he was listed as a ‘master cabinet maker’, with his 15 -year old cousin David as apprentice. The business appeared regularly in directories from 1875 onwards and by 1881 William had built new showrooms and a workshop in the main street of St Clears. At this time he was recorded as a ‘cabinet manufacturer employing four men’. All his workmen and apprentices lived at the Temperance Hotel, which he had built as part of his premises. An advertising postcard of 1909 survives (illus. Bebb (2007), II, fig. 1262), showing a mirrored and heavily carved sideboard in a historicist ‘Elizabethan’ style. When William Beynon died in 1923 there was a sale of stock which reveals that his was a comprehensive furnishing business, selling bought-in household items – clocks, fire grates, mangles – as well as furniture made on the premises. Several of his workmen continued afterwards to work in the area.
Source: Bebb, Welsh Furniture (2007), II, pp. 274, 324-5, 340.
Occupation
Ornamentation/Design
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