Antique Pratts Of Bradford Table

Antique Pratts of Bradford table Top diameter 24” Height 17” Cash and carry only Pratt, Christopher & Sons; Pratt & Prince North Parade, Bradford, Yorkshire; cabinet makers, upholsterers and decorators (fl.1850-c.1920) Pratt was an employee of Joseph Nutter of Bradford and took over his business in partnership with Thomas Prince when Nutter retired in 1850. The firm of Christopher Pratt & Sons was listed in The Furniture Gazette Directory, 1876. The partnership was dissolved with regards to Mr C. Pratt in 1887 but the business continued trading until into the 20th century [The Furniture Gazette, 1 August 1887]. Pratt & Sons produced a large variety of general furnishings of sound but unspectacular quality, including revival styles: Queen Anne, Chippendale, Adam &c. A complete bedroom suite, inlaid with ebony, bone & fruitwoods, of half tester bed, dressing table, chest of drawers and pair of cane-seated chairs, sold by Sothebys, 29/30 November 1984, lot 214. The firm later experimented with Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau and for a time were agents for Liberty & Co. They participated in the Industrial & Fine Art Exhibition, Bradford Technical School, in July 1882, with a ‘tasteful display of furniture and decorations’, and one of their sideboards was shown in the Students’ Entrance Hall. They won a gold medal at this exhibition [The Furniture Gazette, 22 July, 18 August & 23 December 1882]. At the International Inventions Exhibition, 1885 their exhibits included an elaborate Spanish mahogany dressing table in the style of modern French Renaissance and Pratt was awarded a bronze medal for his furniture and floor & wall coverings. [TheFurniture Gazette, 1 June & 1 September 1885]. Decoration commissions included the Masonic Hall, Great George Street, Leeds [The Furniture Gazette, 6 December 1884] and decorative and upholstery work in connection with the Shah’s reception at Bradford Town Hall [The Furniture Gazette, 1 August 1889]. Their Bradford desk won a gold medal at the Brussels International Exhibition, 1910. Powered machinery was installed in 1874. Much of the work was outsourced to smaller furniture makers in the locality, and Pratts also bought in from suppliers in London and elsewhere, including William Smee & Son (London), C. & W. Trapnell (Bristol), and Jennens & Bettridge (Birmingham). From the 1850 onwards they also bought from stock quantities of Windsor chairs from B. North, E. Hutchinson & Son and Glenisters of High Wycombe. Their trade catalogue for 1901 [Temple Newsam, Leeds] includes a list of suggested furnishings for a servant’s bedroom at a total cost of £5 12s 3d. In 1902 they won a contract worth £9,062 to supply Scalebor Park Asylum, Yorkshire with furniture to equip this new mental hospital. Each patient’s room was equipped with a fumed oak bed, a chair, a single-door wardrobe, a combination wash-stand cum dressing table with marble slab and tile splash-back and a bedside pedestal. Sources: Gilbert, ‘Victorian and Edwardian Furniture by Pratts of Bradford’, Furniture History (1971), shorter notices; Gilbert, English Vernacular Furniture 1(contact info removed) (1991).