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Marks, Murray; Marks & Durlacher Brothers (1876-1886)

Marks, Murray; Marks & Durlacher Brothers

Oxford Street, London; cabinet makers, art furniture manufacturers and merchants (fl.1876-86)

Murray Marks was primarily known as a dealer in paintings and decorative objects in the second-half of the nineteenth century.  He often bid at auction on behalf of the South Kensington Museum and sold several objects to the Museum during the 1870s and 1880s.  Marks also gave donations to the Museum, including a collection of leather panels, and to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge in the last ten years of his life; he died in 1918. 

After his father, also a dealer, had retired (probably late 1860s/early 1870s) Murray moved to his father’s old premises at 395 Oxford Street, which he had redesigned by the architect, Richard Norman Shaw. He was recorded at this address as an art furniture manufacturer & merchant in The Furniture Gazette Directory, 1876 & 1877. After this date he merged his business with the Durlacher Brothers, Mayfair dealers. 

The firm of Marks & Durlacher was listed at 103 Oxford Street as cabinet makers, art furniture manufacturers & merchants in The Furniture Gazette: Classified List of the Furniture, Upholstery, and Allied Trades (1886).

For further information regarding the dealer business of Marks & Durlacher (separately & in partnership), see Westgarth, ‘A Biographical Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Antique and Curiosity Dealers’, Regional Furniture (2009).