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Kenton & Co. (1891-1892)

Kenton & Co.

London; furniture makers (fl.1891–92)

Kenton & Company was a short-lived enterprise which aimed to improve the design and status of furniture by the close involvement of its members in ‘the execution of their work by their own workmen.’ It produced some exceptionally fine pieces, received many positive reviews when it held an exhibition, but closed after existing officially for only sixteen months. The firm was a partnership in a limited company of the designers and architects Mervyn Macartney (Chairman), Sidney Barnsley (Company Secretary), Reginald Blomfield, William Lethaby, Ernest Gimson, Stephen Webb and Colonel Harold Esdaile Malet (a sleeping partner who ‘had taste and knew people’).

It was formed in 1890 ‘with the object of designing, making and supplying furniture of excellent quality’. Gimson and Lethaby had been discussing such a scheme since at least June, but a first meeting was held on 24 October 1890 at Blomfield’s rooms and formal registration of the Company was in February 1891 with a nominal capital of £3000, divided into 300 shares of £10 each. Barnsley, Blomfield, Gimson and Macartney had fifteen shares each; Lethaby thirteen; Stephen Webb eight; and Malet twenty. According to Blomfield, ‘four or five of the best workmen we could get’ were engaged. These included W. Hall, who became the foreman, A. Bowen, G. Bellamy, A. Thorn and R. Urand. Augustus H. Mason may have been involved but this is uncertain since he worked for Gimson and Lethaby before and after the existence of Kenton & Co. He had his own employees and workshop in Denmark Place off Charing Cross Road. In addition to these craftsmen, H. J. L. J. Massé, then Assistant Secretary of the Art Workers’ Guild, later claimed that he was offered the post of manager but turned it down.

When first registered, Kenton & Co.’s premises were to be in Jubilee Place, Chelsea, the address given on a circular produced early in 1891, but this appears to have been a temporary arrangement, if used at all, and by July the firm had leased a workshop in Brownlow Mews, Guilford Street.

In his memoirs published in 1932 Reginald Blomfield discussed the practicalities of Kenton’s output, writing that ‘We used to meet in each other’s rooms, undertake designs of our own choice and invention more or less in turn, except the Colonel, who held, as it were, a watching brief on the whole proceeding. Each man was responsible solely for his own design and its execution, and it was delightful to go to the [work]shop and see one’s design growing into shape in the hands of our skilful cabinet-makers. We made no attempt to interfere with each other’s idiosyncrasies.’

The firm adopted the practice of stamping pieces with ‘Kenton & Co Ld’, the name of the maker and the initials of the designer, and it credited the cabinet makers when pieces were exhibited. Several items are known with Sidney Barnsley’s initials but no maker’s name, so it is thought that he executed these designs himself. 

According to a letter from Gimson to his family in July 1891, ‘It is Kenton’s great show to day at Barnard’s Inn’, but this exhibition in Holborn was not well documented, unlike a more public display of the firm’s work in the same hall in December 1891, when about £700 worth of furniture was sold. Furniture and Decoration, 1 January 1892, praised many of the exhibits at the December show, noting Macartney’s mahogany chairs positively but criticising their price of £24 for six. An inlaid cabinet made by Hall and a rosewood settee by Urand, both to designs by Blomfield, were praised by The Builder, as was Gimson’s elaborate marquetry cabinet which is now in the Musée d’Orsay: ‘a really fine thing, full of character, and well constructed and designed in every portion, and if it were an ancient work in the furniture gallery of South Kensington it would be one of the most interesting items of the collection, and would be sketched over and over again’ [The Builder, 19 December 1891, p. 458].

Seven pieces of furniture designed by Gimson are recorded, including an oak dresser (illus. Carruthers, Greensted, Roscoe (2019), p. 54) and some items marked by Bowen - six mahogany dining chairs and a writing cabinet. This cabinet was bought by Allan Vigers, a fellow designer, and subsequently acquired from his daughter by the V&A.

Image
writing cabinet
Copyright (Attribution/Credit)
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Mahogany cabinet on stand with marquetry of various woods, designed by Ernest Gimson. Made by Bowen, 1891 [CIRC.404:1 to 4-1964]. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The British Architect, 18 December 1891, welcomed both the December exhibition and the firm and found the furniture beautiful in form, delightful because of the quality of the workmanship and reasonable in price. For example, there were ‘plain sensible oak shelves at £5 the pair, a little hanging shelving at 30s, and six oak chairs that would last two or three lives for £10’.

Shelves made by the firm are shown in a photograph of the drawing room at The White House, Leicester, in 1896-7, a house designed by Gimson for his half-brother Arthur (illus. Carruthers, Greensted, Roscoe (2019), p. 145). Two high-backed armchairs designed by Lethaby and made by Kenton & Co. about 1891, one of which is now at the Art Workers’ Guild and the other in St John the Baptist church, Aldenham, Hertfordshire, are illus. Rubens (1986), p. 99. It seems likely that Kenton & Co. cabinet makers executed the fitted furniture in Sidney Barnsley’s Church of the Wisdom of God in Kingswood, Surrey, which was dedicated in July 1892. No Kenton & Co. furniture of Stephen Webb’s design has yet been identified and his role is unclear, since the elaborately inlaid work he designed for Collinson & Lock and showed in Arts & Crafts exhibitions was very different in character from Kenton & Co.’s productions.

Despite the healthy sales, the prices were not sufficient to cover overheads and in January 1892 a second call on the shares was made and a further £465 raised, though £40 remained unpaid. This was probably the point at which Webb departed the firm. Four months later, having decided that another £1,000 was required, the partners wound up the business voluntarily without having claimed all the promised funds. The reasons for closure were financial but probably also included the desire of some members to prioritise their architectural careers.

The stock of furniture was divided between them. Lethaby chose Blomfield’s oak cabinet with an inlay of rabbits eating lettuce, Gimson’s walnut cabinet, Barnsley’s gate-legged table and Macartney’s revolving bookcase. Barnsley apparently took two of Lethaby’s oak chests, one inlaid with ships and the other with sheep, Gimson’s oak dresser and a walnut wardrobe. Blomfield’s selection included a snakewood mirror, his own rosewood settee and Macartney’s writing table, possibly the one exhibited at the firm’s show in December 1891. A cabinet by Gimson with marquetry of honeysuckle was later published as belonging to Macartney and may have been part of his share. Gimson himself owned an oak chair by Lethaby which was probably in his selection, along with his own set of six mahogany chairs, now shared between Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, the Crafts Study Centre and the V&A Chair | Gimson, Ernest William | V&A Search the Collections (vam.ac.uk)

The cabinet makers working in the firm were made redundant and presumably did not receive a share of the profits as the partners originally intended, according to the Memorandum of Association, because there were no profits. Hall was given use of the workshop until the lease was up but there is no record of whether he occupied it alone or with some of the others.   

Several contemporary designers were clearly interested in Kenton & Co.’s output and elements of design adapted from the work of Blomfield, Gimson and Lethaby in particular can be seen in pieces of the next few years by Ernest Barnsley, Robert Lorimer, Charles Voysey and others. 

Some Kenton & Co. furniture was also displayed at the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, 1896 and 1916; the names of the makers were not recorded in the catalogue descriptions, simply Kenton & Co. These included:

1896 – rosewood workbox, designed by W.R. Lethaby, exhibited by Mrs Swainson (cat. no. 182)

1916 – rosewood settee designed and exhibited by Reginald Blomfield (cat. no. 46); escritoire, designed and exhibited by Mervyn Macartney (cat. no. 69).

The names of the cabinet makers at Kenton & Co. are given differently in publications such as the Arts & Crafts Exhibition catalogues and contemporary magazines. The most reliable information comes from the names stamped on the furniture but these are not recorded for all the known pieces. Those known with the Kenton & Co Ld stamp are G. Bellamy, Bowen, W. Hall and A. Thorn. Urand is also recorded in A&CES catalogues as J. or R. but a piece stamped by him does not appear to have been recorded. His name is unusual, however, and it seems fairly certain that he was Robert Urand. The idea that Augustus Mason was involved seems to be associated with the cabinet in the Musée d’Orsay.  Recent research confirms that the craftsmen were:

All were cabinet makers active in London in the relevant period. Three were Londoners and the other two were from Lincolnshire and Devon. 

Annette Carruthers

Sources: Aslin, Nineteenth Century English Furniture (1962); Comino, Gimson and the Barnsleys (1980); Rubens, William Richard Lethaby (1986); Cooper, Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors (1987); Gere & Whiteway, Nineteenth-Century Design: From Pugin to Mackintosh (1993); Carruthers & Greensted, Good Citizen’s Furniture: The Arts and Crafts Collections at Cheltenham (1994); Collard, ‘Kenton & Co’, The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the Present (1996); Carruthers, Greensted, Roscoe, Ernest Gimson. Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect (2019); ancestry.co.uk (2020).