Dowbiggins of Tatham, Lancaster and LondonGeorgian and Victorian cabinet makers par excellence | |
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One of the treasures of the Judges Lodgings Museum in Lancaster is an exquisite bookcase commissioned in 1772 by Mary Hutton Rawlinson, widow of the Quaker West Indian merchant Thomas Hutton Rawlinson. Such is its importance that the government placed an export ban on it when it came up for sale in 2007 and £207,000 was raised to buy it for the nation. It was commissioned from Gillows, the Lancaster cabinet making company whose furniture is widely regarded as among the finest in the country at that time and whose reputation today remains high.
The craftsmen who made, carved and inlaid it were two men who had been born in Tatham. Thomas Dowbiggin (1738-1811) had been baptised in October 1738 in Tatham St James the Less where his parents John and Isabell Egglin [sic] had married in January of that year. His younger brother John was baptised three years later in May 1741.
Both sons were apprenticed for seven years as joiners and cabinet makers to Robert Thorney, Lancaster cabinet maker, in 1752 and 1754 respectively. Their father John was described as a husbandman (ie tenant farmer) although it is not known exactly where he lived. Thorney was then an important cabinet maker in the town with extensive premises on Green Ayre producing fine quality furniture and household furnishings. He had himself been apprenticed in Lancaster in 1731 and died in 1791 and he engaged no fewer than twenty apprentices during his career, several of whom went on to work for Gillows. When their apprenticeships were over Thomas and John were admitted as freemen of the town in 1761-62, enjoying trading privileges and qualifying as electors in parliamentary elections. In the 1784 election, for example, for which a poll book survives (a list of voters which shows how they voted) they both supported Abraham Rawlinson, West Indian merchant, and his running partner, Frances Reynolds. Both men’s names regularly appear in the Gillow ledgers and they were clearly among the firm’s most trusted workmen who could be entrusted with such an intricate piece as the bookcase. Thomas was essentially acting as foreman in the workshops by 1781. The firm’s ledger books do not always mention what pieces their craftsmen were paid for but we know that as well as joinery, he was skilled carver, designing bed cornices for Mary Hutton Rawlinson in c.1771 as well as picture frames for other clients. In 1772 Gillows noted in their Petty Ledger that Thomas Dowbiggin had worked for them for 267 days, for which they paid him £40 1s; in 1774 for 275¾ days for £41 1s 3d.; and in 1776 52 weeks for £54 12s. Thomas had married Elizabeth Hully in St Mary’s Priory Church in May 1761, and their son Francis had been born in 1765 (died 1832). He was apprenticed to his father in 1780 and also went on to work for Gillows for the rest of his career, until at least 1818. He is particularly renowned for the exquisite lady’s workbox, also in the Judges Lodgings, made in 1808 for Elizabeth Gifford of Plas Ucha, Nercwys.
Francis’s son Thomas (1788-1854) became even more celebrated than his father and grandfather, achieving national recognition during his lifetime. He was apprenticed to Robert Gillow (1764-1838) in Lancaster, and his brothers George (1766-1822) and Richard Gillow (1772-1849) of Oxford Street in February 1803. The British and Irish Furniture Makers Online suggests that he might have served part of his time in the Oxford Street premises and that he could have worked for his father in his premises in Sun Street, Lancaster on finishing his apprenticeship. In about 1816, however, he established his own business, Thomas Dowbiggin & Co., in Mount Street, London. His partner in these early years was Thomas Minikin, thirteen years his senior (b. 1775, Dalton in Furness) who is recorded in Gillow accounts for 1798-99 and is known to have produced a tea caddy, now in the Victoria & Albert Museum. The partnership was dissolved in February 1823, with the men going their separate ways. Minikin traded on his own account and was also selling hardwood from Brazil, where his brother James was a merchant. He won an award from the Society of Arts in 1828 for producing a novel invalid chair, essentially a recliner which could double as a bed, but his career was curtailed the following year by his premature death. Dowbiggin remained in Mount Street and became the premier cabinet maker, upholsterer and interior designer in London by the 1830s, decorating and furnishing many country and town houses of the wealthy aristocracy and London elite: Burton Constable; Apsley (for the Duke of Wellington); Wynyard Park in County Durham; Lord Willoughby of Piccadilly and Grimsthorpe; Drummond Castle and Audley End. The pinnacle of his success, however, was the award of several commissions from the Crown. C. Howard Smith’s book on Buckingham Palace states that his firm carved and upholstered Queen Victoria’s state throne in 1837, for which they were paid £1187.
He was responsible for furniture in Windsor Castle in the 1840s, including a 150 feet long table for St George’s Hall consisting of thirteen separate tables, eight feet wide capable of seating 162 diners. He was also commissioned to produce furniture for Victoria and Albert’s Osborne House on the Isle of Wight in the 1840s and was appointed an adviser on furniture and upholstery for the Great Exhibition in 1851 at which he exhibited several pieces, receiving a medal for a carved cabinet. In 1833 he diversified into property speculation, purchasing Bute House, which he demolished in the 1840s before laying out Bute Street in the grounds. He was also engaged on other building projects in the Grosvenor Square area. After his death his firm was merged with Holland & Son, a partnership with whom he had worked for some years. His family continued to live at Abercorn Lodge, St John’s Wood, where his widow and only son were described in the 1861 census as proprietors of houses. One will never know what would have transpired had not John Dowbiggin of Tatham decided to apprentice his sons as cabinet makers. What is clear that those sons, particularly Thomas, and their descendants, have left us a legacy of fine furniture some of which can still be seen in Lancaster and in grand and royal homes across the country.
I am very grateful to Susan Stuart for sharing her extensive knowledge of Gillows and their archives.
Primary Sources Census 1841, 1851, 1861; Secondary Sources British and Irish Furniture Makers Directory
https://bifmo.history.ac.uk/ |
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