Midcentury Picks

As a long-established British manufacturer devoted to making beautifully crafted wooden furniture with timeless good looks, could Ercol be our very own Fritz Hansen? Author and design historian Lesley Jackson makes her case. Ercol: The Other Windsor Dynasty 114 MidCentury|Autumn/Winter 2013 MidCentury|Autumn/Winter 2013 115 s crime fiction aficionados will know, if you fine-grained beech juxtaposed with honey- want to conceal a crucial piece of evidence, coloured richly-textured elm. But it wasn’t just Athe best ploy is to hide it in plain sight. the seductive appeal of these materials that made There are parallels in the design world. It’s often Ercol furniture so alluring, it was the distinctive the most familiar objects – the ones we take for nature of its designs, especially in the Windsor granted because they’re so ubiquitous - whose Range, a collection inspired by the traditional merits are overlooked. Windsor chair. Ercol, one of the biggest names in the British Blending the modern with the vernacular might furniture industry during the post-war period, is a sound like an unlikely formula - most brand that many of us have grown up with and manufacturers plump for one or the other – but in covertly appreciated, but which barely gets a Ercol’s case it worked brilliantly, providing a mention in the official histories of design. flexible model for a diverse collection of designs. Beloved in the 1950s and ’60s by our parents and The stick-back structure that (literally) forms the grandparents, Ercol is now much coveted by backbone of the Windsor chair provides a mid-century design enthusiasts and the great recurrent leitmotif throughout the Windsor thing is that, chances are, it’s right under your Range, cropping up in benches, coffee tables and nose. room dividers as well as beds, armchairs and Ercol is still going strong today and, settees. gratifyingly, is still family-owned and run: the The creative genius behind the Windsor Range present chairman, Edward Tadros, is the grandson was Lucian R. Ercolani himself, a furniture of the founder, Lucian R. Ecolani (1888-1976). designer-turned-manufacturer who set up the After 82 years on its original site at High company in 1920 and played a pivotal role for over Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, Ercol moved into a 50 years. As his name suggests, Ercolani was of new purpose-designed, state-of-the-art Miesian Italian extraction, his family having moved to glass box factory just down the road at Princes London from Florence when he was ten. He Risborough in 2002. studied at Shoreditch Technical College in London At the peak of production in 1968, the company and worked for two other leading High Wycombe employed 800 people and was manufacturing up to companies, Frederick Parker & Sons and E. 2,000 pieces of furniture a day. According to the Gomme (later known as G-Plan), before striking Ercolion (Ercol’s entertaining and informative out on his own. post-war lion mascot), the factory was so efficient It was actually a wartime commission from the that a new chair emerged from the production line Board of Trade for 100,000 Windsor kitchen chairs every ten seconds. That’s a heck of a lot of chairs! that was to trigger the idea for the Windsor Quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality of Range. After being showcased at the Britain Can course, although with Ercol this was (and still is) Make It exhibition at the Victoria and Albert undoubtedly the case. While other companies Museum in 1946, the Windsor Contemporary embraced cheaper materials such as plastics and Furniture Family was launched at the Festival of plywood, Ercol championed the virtues of solid Britain in 1951. It continued to grow and flourish wood, using native English timbers like pale for the next 20 years. Previous page: Ercol mechanised multi-press, c.1955-62; Right: 365 Quaker Dining Chair, 1957. Images courtesy of Ercol/Richard Dennis Publications. 116 MidCentury|Autumn/Winter 2013 MidCentury|Autumn/Winter 2013 117 .

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