Stooks, Thomas

Rose & Crown Yard, Leeds, Yorkshire; cabinet maker, appraiser and auctioneer (fl.1775–98)

Recorded at Briggate in 1798.  Stooks advertised that he could offer ‘CABINET GOODS of all sorts made in the genteelest taste’ and that he ‘appraises & sells all Sorts of Household Furniture, Utensils, Stock-inTrade, Plate etc’.

He was listed as a master and co-signatory for the 1791 Leeds Book of Prices and in 1793 subscribed to Sheraton's Drawing Book.

An invoice and letter relating to the supply of furniture by this maker to a Mr Kear, attorney-at-law, of Barnsley, Yorkshire, survives. The items supplied include a mahogany camp bed with sacking bottom, a four post bedstead with reeded posts, a dressing glass, a butler's tray and other trays and totalled £22 6s 1d. Stooks was still urging payment in 1799, a year after the issue of the original invoice [Leeds Mercury, 20 June 1775, 14 May, 28 May, 18 June 1776; Calder Valley Museum, John Goodchild Collection].  

Sources: DEFM; Jones, ‘The Leeds Cabinet and Chair-Makers Book of Prices (1791) Reprint’, Regional Furniture (1995).