The Art Furniture Company was a short-lived but influential architect-led firm active in London c.1867–1868. Based at 25 Garrick Street, Covent Garden, it was described by the Illustrated London News as being “prepared to supply at ordinary trade prices domestic furniture of an artistic and picturesque character,” using designs by Charles Locke Eastlake, Arthur Blomfield and Edward William Godwin among other architects.
Created to give practical form to new ideas about “art furniture” and household taste, the company manufactured Godwin’s progressive cabinet designs for a brief period before closing, after which his work was taken up by firms such as Gillow, Green and King and Collinson and Lock. Although its trading life was short, the Art Furniture Company played a key role in introducing architect-designed, pared-back furniture to the Victorian middle-class interior, anticipating later Aesthetic and Anglo-Japanese developments in British design.
