Peter J. Martin and Son Antiques

Description

Exceptional quality Gillow style mahogany sideboard, the pedestal ends having pagoda tops and paw feet, flanking a centre section with a bowed drawer above fine reeded supports. Bears maker’s label ‘Maple & Co.’.

Maple & Co. were the pre-eminent furniture manufacturers and retailers of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Masterminded by the visionary entrepreneur Sir John Blundell Maple (1845-1903), the business grew exponentially from the humble beginnings of a family business in a small shop in Horley, Surrey to a point where its Tottenham Court Road premises in London was the largest furnishing store on the planet. The British Empire was spreading around the world and Maples seized the opportunity, manufacturing their own luxury furniture in a complex eventually so vast that by the 1880s it occupied an area where once stood 200 houses. They were timber importers, and exporters of furniture and fittings to all parts of the world. They used steam power and electricity, had a fleet of horse-drawn vans, depository and showrooms, and employed a vast workforce.

Maples' market was the middle class and upwards - anyone anywhere who had money. They furnished palaces all over the world, including Tsar Nicholas's Winter Palace, the Hofburg Imperial Palace in Vienna, all the great hotels, and town and country homes. Prestigious British embassies were all furnished by Maples, even if it meant carrying the grand piano up the Khyber Pass on packhorses!