Henshaw (Hinshaw), William (1627-78)
Henshaw (Hinshaw), William
Fleet Street near Ludgate, London; cabinetmaker and marqueteur (fl. 1627-1678)
William Henshaw is one of the earliest documented London cabinetmakers. The son of a yeoman from Bishopsgate, he was apprenticed through the London Clothworkers’ Company to George Perkins on the 3 March 1626/27 and made free by servitude in 1639. By 1647 he was a resident in Fleet Street near Ludgate Hill when he bound his first apprentice. Over the following thirty-one years he indentured nine more with the last in 1678. Until 1658 Henshaw's apprentices were indentured through the Clothworkers' Company but thereafter they were bound through the Joiners' Company and 'turned over' to him 'to learn the art of a joiner' as a result of an Act of Common Council, which made all freemen practising joinery subject to Joiners' Company regulations.
On 22 August 1667 he submitted an invoice for £50 to Charles Stewart, Duke of Richmond for ‘an inlade cabinet wth flowers & birds and an table & stands sutable to it wth table & stands. I ingage to deliver wthin three weeks wittnes my hand this 22 of August 67’ [British Library, ADD MS 21950, Papers of Charles Stuart, Duke of Richmond, vol. iv (no. 49, 22 Aug 1667].
Source: Clothworkers' Company records; Joiners' Company records; Lindey, ’The London furniture trade, 1640-1720’ (unpublished University of London PhD. thesis, 2016).
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