Product Description
A handsome oak bookcase designed by Paul Matt for Brynmawr Furniture Makers Ltd c.1930 with label to back. With raised chamfered galleried back above a rectangular top with two glazed doors enclosing a shelved interior all raised on chamfered supports. A good quality and elegant oak bookcase in good condition designed in the Arts & Crafts ethos with hints of Art Deco and Modernism, a design that looks as modern today as it did almost 90 years ago.
The Brynmawr (pronounced brin-mau-er) Furniture Makers Ltd was established in 1929 by a group of Quakers in the small South Wales town of Brynmawr. It was part of a wider initiative called “The Brynmawr Experiment”, an attempt to relieve the severe economic depression and mass unemployment in the area in the late 1920s. The company hired designer Paul Matt, tasked with the job of creating a range of designs that would be both modern and yet simple to assemble by the initially unskilled workforce. Taking his inspiration from modern architecture, the Arts and Crafts movement and Art Deco, Matt’s simple designs gave Brynmawr furniture a distinctive modern edge. Available in department stores such as Browns of Chester and Lewis’s of Birmingham and Manchester, Brynmawr furniture was aimed at the middle class and professional classes of the era, marketed with glossy brochures and with a showroom in Cavendish Square, London. Following the onset of World War II, Brynmawr Furniture struggled as the demand for high quality furniture declined and oak became increasingly difficult to import, the company finally closing its doors in 1940.
Construction/Wood:
Oak / Laminated Oak
Condition Report:
Good condition, warm patina to oak, one door locks and comes with working key. General wear and marks commensurate with age.
Dimensions:
Width: 90cm
Depth: 30cm
Height to Back: 127cm
Height to Front: 123cm