Clozenberg & Company (1884-1905)
Clozenberg & Son; Clozenberg & Company
Curtain Road and Great Eastern Street, London; furniture makers (fl.1884-1905)
On the 6 December 1884 The Furniture Gazette announced Clozenberg & Son had moved from 71 Rivington Street, Curtain Road to more extensive premises at 119 Curtain Road. The firm was recorded there in The Furniture Gazette: Classified List of the Furniture, Upholstery, and Allied Trades (1886).
The Furniture Gazette, 1 April 1889, announced the partnership with H. E. Clozenberg was dissolved. By 1891 Clozenberg’s factory covered 11,390 square feet, including a large rear extension of several floors and employed 120 workers. They were recorded as a bamboo furniture manufacturer at the same address in 1892. In the same year Clozenberg & Company published a new trade catalogue [The Furniture Gazette, 15 November 1892] and advertised a seven piece upholstered suites in superior finish for £10; this compared with The Austrian Bentwood Furniture Company ‘No. 58 suite in leather or Frieze Velvet, stuffed all hair, polished Walnut, Mahogany or Ebonised For £8-0-0’.
In 1897 The Cabinet Maker and Art Furnisher described the new premises of this furniture wholesaler became manufacturers in Great Eastern Street: ‘Messrs Clozenberg, knowing that half measures are of small avail in these terms, decided to lay down a plant which should bear upon every process of manufacture and enable them to produce cleanly-worked and well-finished goods with the greatest rapidity, and, while being superior in every way, at a lower price than heretofore... In the basement at 80, Great Eastern Street now the scene is truly a busy one. Every available inch of space is occupied by timber and modern labour-saving contrivances for its conversion. Sawing, planning, moulding, boring, dovetailing, and other machines are whizzing away, turning out parts of suites by the score with perfect accuracy and finish, while, above, the fitting-up and polishing shops are kept fully employed in completing goods for despatch... As an illustration of the speed with which they are now able to turn out goods, Mr Clozenberg informs us that, only recently, they made and delivered – for a single order – fifty bedroom suites in under a fortnight in addition to their ordinary business’.
An advertisement in The Furniture Record, 25 August 1905, said the firm specialised in exports to South Africa (illus. Kirkham, Mace & Porter (1987), p. 50).
Sources: Walkling, Antique Bamboo Furniture (1979); Kirkham, Mace & Porter, Furnishing the World. The East London Furniture Trade 1830-1980 (1987); Bland, Take a Seat. The Story of Parker Knoll, 1834-1994 (1995).
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