How, Thomas

Jarman Street, corner of Duke Street, Westminster, London; upholder and upholsterer (1710–1733)

Purchased separate insurance policies in 1714–15 on his goods and a house in Brompton, parish of Kensington [The London Archives (TLA), Sun MS vol 3, ref. 3753 and TNA, Hand in Hand MS vol. 14, p. 397].

In 1710–11 he provided furnishings to the value of £830 to the 5th Earl of Salisbury at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, the State bed alone costing £289. He also supplied richly upholstered seat furniture for the waiting room, the green damask room, the dining room and the red room at Hatfield, as well as two more beds [Hatfield House MS no.467; Country Life, 22 December 1983, p. 1853]. He may also have supplied  similar furniture to Clandon Park [Rowell, Furniture History, p. 51].  

The Monson papers include a bill dated 1733 from Thomas How to Lady Sonds for bedding, upholstery materials, cushions, etc., amounting to £13 6s 6½d; it is receipted ‘pr Tho How by ye hands of Mr John Delacourt’ [Lincoln Record Office, Monson papers, no. 12].

The name ‘Thomas How of Westminster, gentleman, upholsterer’ occurs on an inscribed lead plaque found at Sutton Scarsdale, Derbyshire. recording the names of the architect and fifteen master tradesmen responsible for building, decorating and equipping the hall. The tablet, which bears two dates 1724 and 1728 is described in Country Life, 15 February 1919, p. 171. 

The survivors from a walnut suite formerly at Sutton Scarsdale, embellished with verre eglomisé armorial panels and gilt lead mounts (now divided between the MMA, NY, the Frick Collection, the Cooper Hewitt Museum and Temple Newsam, Leeds) are likely to be from How's workshop. 

Sources; DEFM; Christopher Rowell, 'Seventeenth-Century Furniture at Knole', Furniture History (2023).