Furniture History Society Newsletter Review

I am very pleased with the review of William Ince Cabinet Maker in the August edition of the Furniture History Society’s Newsletter.

Lisa White calls it a welcome second edition and picks up on the extra chapter about John Mayhew and the lively careers of Ince’s descendants. 

She says: Sarah Ingle’s book is of interest to the furniture historian as well as the social historian, for she traces the lives of many members of the Ince family from the early sixteenth century in Elmley Lovett, near Kidderminster in Worcestershire to the famous cabinet-maker’s father… Throughout, Ingle paints a convincing picture of the economic and social background for the family making its way from relative provincial obscurity to William Ince’s pre-eminence in Britain’s furniture industry in London’s fashionable West End in the1760s to the 1790s.

She also picks up on the contrast of the Ince family’s modesty with the more socially assured, wealthy John Mayhew who financed the furniture business.  She mentions a helpful list of the exotic woods they used in their finest pieces and says This volume serves as a reminder to all furniture historians to ‘dig deep’ into parish records, marriage bonds, wills, deeds and indentures.

Lily White, Furniture History Society Newsletter, no. 219, August 2020