Chairs, Children & Chores
The majority of workers in Wycombe’s furniture industry were male. However, female chair makers played an essential if less well-known role. Men’s jobs were always better paid and more likely to be full time. Women were paid less, often worked part-time and they sometimes worked from home, so their contributions have been less visible and under-appreciated. However, their work was not necessarily less skilled or less important. In common with most industries, the better paid jobs were not usually open to women.
When women worked from home, they would also be responsible for doing housework and looking after the younger children too. This meant that often women had to work late into the night to complete all of their chair-making work alongside their other tasks. Women earned much less than men per hour. In 1902, women workers only ever earned about half as much as male workers, and sometimes as little as a third – and the men are not well paid!
Women in the Woods
Although our idea of a bodger in the woods is of men chopping down trees and turning chair parts on pole lathes, the truth is that women were sometimes involved too. Bodgers usually worked in pairs, but if men worked alone, they would ask their wives to step in and help with any tasks that needed two people. There are no records of women working as trained bodgers. It is unlikely that a girl would have been apprenticed as a bodger, or that the male factory owners would have agreed to do business with her if she had.
Sam and Mabel Rockall using a 2-handled cross-cut saw to cut logs into lengths for chair legs, Turville Heath. Date unknown.
Making Caned Seats
In the 1850s, men, women and children as young as 7 made caned seats. By 1902, chair caning was mainly a job done by women, and it had become less well paid. More women became caners when it became harder to earn a living from the traditional crafts of lace making or straw plaiting. Some worked in the factories, others in their own homes. By 1890, very few men worked as chair caners.
Whether they worked in the factory or at home, chair caners had to supply their own stools to sit on and their own tools. They laced the ‘cane’ through holes in the seat and fixed it with little wooden pegs called deals which they made themselves. Then they wove the cane to form the seat, and made a neat finish with broad edging that went around the seat. The cane was made from sections of rattan vine, imported from tropical forests in South-East Asia.
An interior of 8 women posed as if caning chairs. location unknown. Around 1900. Image reference MHW:35392
Making Rush Seats
Matting, a term for making rush seats, was also seen as a women’s job in 1902. It was mainly done by men until about 1880, but with a growing demand for rush chairs, and with the decline of lace making, more women took it on.
It was a dirty, damp and smelly job that was done both in the factories and also in the women’s own homes. The rushes originally came from the river Thames. Later, they were imported. They were full of dust and dirt, and had to be soaked in water.
The matter gripped the chair between her knees and twisted the rush around the chair seat frame, keeping it tight. She used a hammer and block to knock the rows of rush together as she worked. After that she used her wooden stuffing stick to fill the hollow space inside the seat with broken rushes.
Matting in Frieth near High Wycombe. Women and children carrying chairs without seats, and rushes to make the seats, about 1900. Children often did unpaid work. On their way to school, they delivered finished chair seats to the factories that their mothers had made overnight. On their way home they collected fresh work for their mothers to complete. Museum Number MHW:46272
Upholstery
As time progressed and more factories branched out into upholstered and soft furnishings, women made up the main workforce of factory’s upholstery rooms. Sewing had a long tradition of being a ‘women’s job’ and a notorious history of being badly paid.
Women at work at sewing machines in the Cushion Making Shop in Ercol’s furniture factory at Spring Gardens, near Wycombe Marsh. 1925. Museum Number MHW:12466.
View of women fitting covers to a new armchair in part of the upholstery shop at F.T.Ltd. Location unknown. Around 1930s. Museum Number MHW:24723
The upholstery department of G-Plan, comprised of both men and women, assembled for a photo during their annual outing to Brighton. Early 1960s. Museum Number MHW:05800.
Decorative Works & Japanning
We know that women also worked in some of the more decorative parts of the furniture industry, including painting ornamental pieces such as tables and screens.
Our collection includes a circular table painted black and gold with Chinese style scene of hill, trees and houses a surrounding lake on table top. The table was decorated by Adeline Sheriff of High Wycombe, who worked for a local furniture factory in the early 1900s at a time when lacquer work was fashionable. The table top folds upright for storage position.
The collection also includes photographs of an unnamed woman painting a decorative screen for F.T. Ltd. We believe the photograph was taken in around the 1930s.
Wycombe Museum’s table painted by Adeline Sheriff of High Wycombe.
Museum Number HIWLH : T 2.5.2003.1
A woman painting the design of an ornamental screen at the furniture factory of F.T.Ltd. Possibly around 1930s. Museum Number MHW:24745.
Women in Wartime
During both World Wars, men were conscripted into the armed forces. With male workers in short supply women were allowed to take on traditionally male jobs, but expected to give them up once war ended.
In High Wycombe, women took men’s places in furniture factories, especially during WW2. Less furniture was made because raw materials were needed for essential war efforts. Some of Wycombe’s furniture factories (including Gommes, Parker Knoll, Dancer & Hearne, and J.B. Heath) produced the wooden bodies of aircraft, particularly of the De Havilland Mosquito – nicknamed the ‘wooden wonder’.
An interior view, showing manufacture of aircraft parts during WW2 at Parker Knoll and Sons Ltd, on Bellfield Road, High Wycombe. June 1945. Museum Number MHW:3525.
Workers finishing curved-lid containers, possibly for De Havilland Mosquito aircraft. At J.B. Heath (Heathland) Furniture Ltd, onCopyground Lane, High Wycombe, 1942-45. Museum Number MHW:4619.
A woman turning wood parts for De Havilland Mosquito aircraft at Dancer and Hearne Ltd, on Lindsay Ave, High Wycombe. Circa 1944. Museum Number MHW:43074.
A team of five women workers assembling Mosquito aircraft parts at Dancer and Hearne, on Lindsay Ave, High Wycombe. 1942-45. Museum Number MHW:43077.
Equal Pay
In 1970, the Equal Pay Act was issued to ‘prevent discrimination, as regards terms and conditions of employment, between men and women.’ Theoretically, the workplace was becoming a fairer playing field, but in reality women were still discouraged from doing what were seen as ‘men’s jobs’ – which, coincidentally, we usually higher paid than jobs that were traditionally filled by women.
F.T. Ltd’s Furniture Factory
One of our most substantial collection of photographs showing women working on furniture is from the factory of F.T. Ltd., the location of which is unknown. In the photographs, we mainly see women working in the decorative side of the business – in tapestry, upholstery, and painting. But, we also see a woman using a fretsaw to shape chair backs, so we know they were involved in woodworking too. A few of these pictures have been shown throughout this article, but we’re including more below.
The date of these photographs is not certain, but judging from the clothes and hairstyles we think it’s likely that they were taken around the 1930s. If you have information about the factory, or recognise the buildings shown in photographs below, we’d love to hear about it! Send us an email to info@wycombemuseum.org.
View of the art design and painting dept at the furniture factory of F.T.Ltd. Location unknown. MHW:24744.
View of the tapestry design shop in the furniture factory of F.T.Ltd. location unknown. Museum Number MHW:24740.
Women dyeing yarns at the furniture factory of F.T.Ltd. Location unknown. Museum Number MHW:24725.
View of lady operating a fretsaw machine for the manufacture of chair backs in the factory of F.T.Ltd. Museum Number MHW:24724.
View of part of the main factory buildings of the furniture manufacturer F.T.Ltd. Museum Number MHW:24753.
View of lady operating a loom in the manufacture of tapestry cloth at the furniture factory of F.T.Ltd. location unknown. Museum Number MHW:24742.
Close up view of a tapestry work in progress at the furniture factory of F.T.Ltd. location unknown. Museum Number MHW:24741.
View of part of the front offices and factory of F.T.Ltd. Museum Number MHW:24752.
Discover chairs with incredible stories
Wycombe Museum is best known for our furniture collection and chairs – we’re known to many as ‘The Chair Museum’.
Explore Chair of the Month – a project that shines a light on a different historically significant chair every month. In collaboration with the Regional Furniture Society.
Search Our Chair Collection
Search through a selection of the museum’s chair collection database, which has never previously been publicly available.
