Wiseman, I. & S. (1900-72)
Wiseman, I. & S.
Cambridge Heath Road, London E2; cabinet maker and retailer (c.1900-1972)
Isaac Wiseman set up business as a cabinet maker and retailer in Cambridge Heath Road in about 1900, having arrived from Czernowitz, Romania, ten years earlier. His son Sydney (b.1902) started his own business in Ducal Street as Ducal Woodware (1943) Ltd., making domestic woodware and small household items. Sydney’s son, Jeffrey (b.1935), trained as an accountant and joined the family firm in 1955, taking over responsibility in 1960. Sydney died in 1969, the business moved several times finishing up at the Isle of Dogs in 1972. Jeffrey introduced a range of solid pine cabinet furniture in 1966 and by 1997 Ducal was recorded by The Cabinet Maker as a major producer of pine furniture, accounting for one eighth of national production. Additional factory space was taken in Andover, Hampshire in 1983, and by 1997, having bought the Andover firm of A. Younger Ltd, had 350,000 sq ft in ten factories operating in the town, generating output of over £1 million per week of solid pine furniture with plywood backs and drawer bottoms. In 1989 an upholstery factory in South Wales was added to the firm’s portfolio and the total labour force in 1997 was 850. Jeffrey’s sons, James and Simon, joined the Ducal company. A photograph of the exterior of the I Wiseman shop at 489 Cambridge Heath Road with Isaac, Sydney and his two sisters is illus. Massil (1997), pl. 9. The same publication has photographs of Ducal Place and the factory at Andover, pls. 16 & 17.
Source: Massil, Immigrant Furniture Workers in London 1881-1939 (1997).
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