Sopwith, Thomas snr, Jacob and Thomas jnr; T & J Sopwith; Sopwith & Co

Newcastle; joiners, cabinet and chair makers (fl.1787–1935)

The firm of Sopwith & Co., the most important in Newcastle, was founded in 1769 by Thomas Sopwith snr. and taken over by his son Jacob around 1800. Jacob and his younger brother James were apprenticed to James Watson, Jacob completing his indenture and entering the Newcastle Joiners’ Company in 1792 and James in 1801. Either Jacob or his father was probably the Sopwith who subscribed to Sheraton’s Drawing Book (1793). A Directory entry of 1801 cites an address for Thomas in Dog-bank, Newcastle, but the same year Jacob announced that he had moved to new premises at Pilgrim Street, facing All Saint’s Church. It is possible that Jacob and James split at this time, since James was cited in Directories at the Dog-bank address in 1824.

Between 1813 and 1826 Jacob trained four apprentices: Thomas Dickman, Robert Francis, Joseph Milburn and Robert McAlister. In the 1820s a J. Sopwith, cabinet maker, was concerned in the furnishing of Wynyard Park, Co. Durham, for the Marquess of Londonderry. Jacob died in 1829 when the direction of the firm was taken on by Thomas Sopwith jnr (1803-79) who was a cabinet maker but also a surveyor and engineer.

In 1834 he was listed in Directories at Dog-bank, and he also ran the family cabinet works and mahogany yard at Painter Heugh, Newcastle. These burnt down in 1833 but were rebuilt within three months. He opened an office in the Royal Arcade in the 1830s where he advertised ‘Furniture Manufactured from Original Designs’ and his ‘Improved Travelling Cases’. Thomas’s cousin, John Sopwith, joined the firm as partner in the mid-1830s and was responsible for the day-to-day running of the business. In around 1838 they acquired showrooms at the newly redeveloped centre of Newcastle, on the corner of Market Street and Grey Street (illus. Allwood, Furniture History (1990), fig.6). The firm built a new ‘cabinet-factory’ on Sandyford Road around 1844 (illus. Allwood, Furniture History (1990), fig.7). By 1850 the firm T and J Sopwith had moved their showroom to new premises at 15 Northumberland Street. In 1863 the firm had become Sopwith & Co. with showrooms further along Northumberland Street, at 48.

Thomas’s earliest known furniture, a set of twelve chairs and a circular table, were made for the Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham and Newcastle (illus. Allwood, Furniture History (1990), figs 1 and 2) in about 1834. In the 1830s Thomas designed the ‘Monocleid’ cabinet, a writing table with multiple drawers and cabinets that could be opened with one key (illus. Allwood, Furniture History (1990), figs 4, 5 and 6) which continued to be produced until as late as 1897. In around 1846 the firm produced a carved cabinet after a design by William Bell Scott, the carving was by Robert Sadler Scott, a well-known local carver. It was lent to the 1848 Newcastle Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures and Practical Sciences by a Mr. W.C. Hewitson; its later history is unknown. The firm may have supplied the suite of chairs made in 1858-65 for John Robinson Liddell of Viewer House, also known as Howard House, Netherton, nr. Bedlington (illus. Wood, Furniture History (2015), figs 10 and 11). In 1858 John Sopwith furnished the new Town Hall in Newcastle. Thomas Sopwith retired in 1871 and died at his home in London in 1879. In 1887 the firm furnished and decorated a drawing room at the Jubilee Exhibition of that year including wallpaper. The library of the Hancock Museum has ebonised Sopwith chairs which probably date from its opening in 1885. The firm was eventually taken over Robson’s and Chapman’s in 1935.

Sources: DEFM; Allwood, Thomas Sopwith of Newcastle 1803-1879’, Furniture History (1990); Wood, ‘Tied Up in Knots: Three Centuries of the Ribbon-Back Chair’, Furniture History (2015).