dating George Wright tables

[Geoff Large]

just got back from Essex , I will be posting a few pictures soon on the gillows table .

the leveling foot plate that has a hole in the side is a common fixing on some smaller tables , and various makers have used it , such as Jelk's , Palmer , John bennet etc .

full sized tables have very heavy slates , they where not used to level these , due to the thread not being strong enough and making table unsturdy , I think some very early thin slate tables in full size form where fitted with them and seem to remember one that I have worked on having them , but I am sure as some floors require the thread part to exit by sometimes 2 inch , this made the tables wobble .
But when you think about it , the clare thurston jubilee model has threaded bar bolt ontop of the rotunda's , but after adjustment there is also other bolts to lock off to prevent wobble and make the table frame very stiff and sturdy .
The worst tables I have come across for unsturdyness is the Riley starline , which the slates are ontop of adjustable scissor trestle's , you could lean on the table as youre oponent takes a shot and make his ball roll off , I kid you not , they where that unstable !!!
Enbild also made a under frame adjustment table useing threaded bar bolt , but I think was a bit of a filure as these also wobble with the more thread that was showing , they did have lock off bolts , but the design was flimsy .so they discontinued them .

one of the establishments near Southend that I have been to this week have a George wright full size table for sale , with 8 inch readed legs , a burroughs and watts rerubber plate is on one end cushion , and the original george wright plate on the other end cush .
table is in good ciondition woodwork wise , but will require new rubber and cloth , plus nets and leathers etc .
they are looking for around £650+ for it , it is on a ground floor with easy access from a rear carpark .

Other makes that I have worked on this week where a 9ft Palmer and sons circa 1910 and a 10ft with 6 tulip legs , no name plate , but very thin 4 section slate bed making it around 1870/80ish .
and of course the Gillows full size circa 1820/30s .

I am in the worshop tommorow in lincolnshire , a simple day in just a set of B&Watts steel blocks to recover , and look over a table we have just sold for a shade over £10.000.00p. a very nice Orme & sons in Burr honey oak , with ebony embelishments and mouldings , Bargain price due to resession realy as it was priced up at £17.500.00p .
But we are not a museum and tables have to be sold once they are refurbished .
and I also have heard we are close to a sale of the Geroge Wright lions head table that we also have in our specials list of tables for sale .

Geoff

[cuerack]

There are certainly some really fine examples of older tables around, & considering the work & materials in them many are for sale at very tempting prices. If I had the room then I would definately be in the market for a full sized table & almost certainly something from the turn of the century. For me the older tables seem to have something over many of the more modern ones, others might disagree & technically perhaps many modern tables are better. None the less the solidity & proportions as well as the materials many of the Victorian & Edwardian designs from 1890 -1920 would make them my first choice.

Maybe I ought to see about buying one of these big "log cabins" you see at garden centres insulate the blighter well & get some heating in it...........If I thought it could be up to the job I'd give it some thought.

As it is I am happy with the 8ft G Wright we have, & from the earlier posts I think it can be dated to around 1894...........its not a heavily carved one, in fact its relatively modest compared to some but it seems pretty well made to me, nice timber that has got a pleasant colour to it, not too dark so the grain can be seen which is nice.

[Geoff Large]

I have a couple of photo's of george wright tables we have in stock , also one of a nice deep framed orme and sons , once owned by the late Maurice gibb of bee gee's fame .
The 2nd to last photo shows a Geroge Wright 8 foot legs from a 4 leg table with 3 section bed that I used to own , but sold to a friend in the billiard buisness for him to strip and polish , he was asking for £2500 for it . note it has Geroge wrights favoired leg design of readed leg .

his other two designs here is what I call gothic lions head with fluted legs a very heavy carved table and worth every penny of at least £10,000 , but it is for sale at £7500 , and the most common leg of its era the Tulip leg with scroll work to right of it , (both tulip and fluted legs can often be seen on grand Piano's too )

[cuerack]

Great pictures & interesting too.

I think I saw the 8ft G Wright table aadvertised on A P's website along with a few others including a rather nice 8ft Thurston's table. The Thurston table was a 6 legged one if I remember & we thought it was a bit too dark in colour at the time although it looked a nice example. The G Wright also looked as if it would be a very nice table too & I must admit I like the reeded & tulip leg designs too. Its one of those things that 'look right' to me if you know what I mean.

Do you know if the heavier larger diameter legs were turned out of one piece of wood or were they made out of carefully lamminated blocks/planks.

The other thing I heard recently was that some older tables had their frames made out of pine that was veneered is this correct?

On the G Wright table we have there are two sets of screw holes on each of the long frame sides. These are about 2ft from the top & bottom cushion. To me it looks as if the table may have had two cross bracing pieces at some time going across the width of the table. The question is do you think these were original or do you think they were later additions that have since been removed?
Or were they something totally different?
If they were original & are now missing I suppose I ought to think about getting them replaced. Do you know if there was anything like this on your 8ft G Wright?

[Geoff Large]

The legs of a billiard table where made in two pieces normaly , the top square part that has the fixing bolt holes is dowled to the lower turned part , with 3 large wood dowls by animal glue , this can dry out and shrink , and when jacking the frame up to insert leveling pieces under the leg , the leg may fall downwards , so has to be cleaned out between the joint and reglued . I often do this if moving a table , but it is hard to do assembled .
The lower part lets say a tulip leg design , is of one piece on older tables , sometimes they drill a hole down the centre of the leg to stop any cracking .
Later lower cost methods such as Enbild and karnhem and hillman , laminate say 4 pieces of 8 X 2 to form a 8x8 block , then turn the leg from this .

Square legs are normaly one piece . but even these can be laminated .

Yes some older firms veneered over the prefered Scotch pine , as this pine has less knots .
some veneered over solid hard wood , such as the Gillows table I have written about , this is solid honduras mahogany with a very nice flame mahogany face venner .
as hard wood gets scarcer to source then , they would have used the veneer method for the outer frame work , some tables have soft wood munting and inner bearers , others solid oak or mahogany .

I would guess that the screw holes on your side frame are for brass rest hooks , for say a spider and a cross rest .
and yes there where screw holes in the George wright 8ft that I owned .

6 legs on an 8 ft is prefered as 4 legs and the slate could dip in the middle .

Geoff

[cuerack]

Thanks Geoff.

I was wondering if animal glue the prefered material to reglue the legs with or is a modern adhesive used as a substitute nowadays?

I was intrigued to hear that some makers bored out a hole in the centre of the leg in order to avert it from splitting....never even thought of this before , makes you wonder how how they found out it worked.

[cuerack]

Thinking about the histories of some of the older makers & remembering someone had said that information is still turning up on some of them; I saw that most of the B & Watts records were lost in the war by bombing & fire I have also seen a bit of the Riley history with some of the dates/serial numbers quoted. Just wondered how much in the way of company history survives for other makers. For instance Orme, Mawson, Thurston,George Edwards & George Wright............things like production figures, prices etc.
I wondered if anyone knows if any order books for these companies survive, it would be fascinating to know if they do & perhaps it would even be possible to find out who & where a table was originally supplied to.

The list of Prize Medals for George Wright tables earlier on ended in 1908, did this mark the end of them as an independant company or did they continue making tables beyond this time?

Also at a country show recently a local auctioneer had a stall, the chap said there was a snooker museum in Sherringham he did not know any contact names or any other details..............anyone heard of this? I had a quick look on the web but no luck, maybe its closed or maybe he was mistaken, anyhow just thought I'd ask

[100-uper]

The histories of billiard table manufacturers is interesting to me because of the difficulty in obtaining information. I have been compiling information for thirty years and am still discovering new things on an almost daily basis. The search and discovery is all part of the fun.

I am interested that within your list of eminent makers you include the rather obscure provincial firm of Thomas Wordsworth Mawson. Is there some particular reason for your reference this maker? George Wright & Co continued to trade through the 1920's at which time they started to struggle, and in 1928 they were taken over by Orme & Sons. The reason that they stopped exhibiting in 1908 had more to do with the declining interest in international exhibitions than anything else.

The reference to Sherringham must relate to Roger Lee who is a historian and collector of memorabilia. He now runs the Broadland SC in Hellesdon, Norwich. I'm not sure whether he provides tours of his collection, but I'm sure there would be plenty of interest. The only museum as such that I know about is the one operated by Peter Clare in Liverpool.

[cuerack]

Thanks for the quick answer(s).My interest in older tables probably stems back to the time when we had a table at home, a convertible dining table. This table had a rise & fall mechanism that was pretty simple but at the time fascinated me none the less. At one extreeme was the weight of the table that needed some muscle power to lift it, then at the other was the ease at which the wooden bar was raised into place that the bed could be lowered onto. This was located with two simple pegs that fitted into corresponding holes to prevent the bed from being pushed off the frame. Although with the weight involved I think it would have taken delberate effort to do so. Then once the game ended the table was lifted about 1" & a small lever attached to the wooden bar by a simple canvas strap allowed the table to drop to the dining height. Despite the simplicity, or perhaps because of it the mechanism was totally reliable & in all the time we had the table it remained as flat & as level as you could ever wish for. We never knew the exact date of the table but we reckoned it as being late Victorian or early Edwardian. I cannot remember with any certainty who the maker was but I am pretty sure Liverpool was on the trade label.

I mentioned Mawson because they were a maker of a table I once saw that caught my eye. In a way there was nothing particularly outstanding about its design really. It was not ornately carved or anything like that. It had turned legs, urn like with bulbous tops & bottoms with a series of stepped rings, the side rails had simple mouldings to them. I know somethings are subjective & what to one might look ok to another they would not give house room to but I think this table was an absolute cracker. Proportions looked right, colour deep rich, warm, even & polished beautifully with hardly a mark on it. It looked like a piece of furniture that had only ever been owned by someone who looked after it. It had been recovered & re rubbered but nothing had ever been stripped or sanded & it had apprently been in the same family since it was made. You mentioned that they are a bit of an obscure maker, I wonder why this was, the quality of the one I saw seemed pretty good.....were they expensive, or just a smaller maker.To be honest I do not even know where they were from or what date they were in business.

Thankyou for the information onabout G Wright. When we were looking for a billiard table I made a decision to try & get an older one for several reasons. Some are really well made & age does not always detract from their performance. Unfortunately their treatment over time can make them a less attractive proposition & to me over enthusiastic restoration can look almost as bad as neglect. Then there is the fun of trying to find out a bit about the history of what youve got that you would not get with a new table. Not just who made it & when & where but you can find out all sorts of things you might not have known about. Like Geioff saying legs were often bored out as it reduced the chances of them splitting........never heard of this, probably never have occassion to use the information in a practical sense but techniques & methods of how to do things & make things interests me.

[Geoff Large]

A wright's Dining table has just come onto ebay with the gearing within the legs as described in my earlier posts .

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Top-quality-Vi...item255d3f6107

Wrights of 7 Argyll street is the same firm as George wright .





The gearing is large cog steel or cast iron , small cog is made of bronze which if the table is a large 9 or 10 ft they have a habbit of shearing the softer bronze gearing , a customer I knew had one cog left out of the 4 still intact , and had some made in stainless steel from a pattern made from the survinng cog .
you can just make out the conecting bars on the inside of the frame , these turn all 4 cogs at the same time when the master cog is turned useing a winding handle inserted after taking a knee panel off the leg which hides the square lug that the handle locates into .
this photo of leg cavity is the last in line of the gearing system otherwise you would see another Bronze cog to carry the turn onto the next leg , it is a must to check before buying any table like this that the gearing is fully intact in good condition with no teeth missing and working , they need greasing with copper grease .

at £750 this table to me is a bargain on ebay , spend around £1250 to £1500 having it restored / repolished and the table is well worth over £3000 . they are that rare to find . this table is the smaller 6 ft so gears should not have had a hard life lifting a smaller table slate bed .

[Geoff Large]

George Wright original adverts circa 1890 / 1902

Here are two George Wright original adverts

one with 15 prize medals awarded , undated circa 1890 = 15 medals

one with 21 Medals awarded dated june 14th 1902 from the Ladies Field magazine / newspaper .





on the second advert there can be seen a picture of a complete billiards room having a very ornate Carved table and matching panels on the walls of the room including fireplace , all fitting work including the paneling by George Wright .

[Mike P]

Geoff, that is an amazing looking table. Do you know how many man hours would have gone into making it? I have pictures (can’t seem to find them) of a Samuel May table that was hand carved. Each panel (between the legs) and legs had a sporting scene carved into it. I played on it years ago when it was at the Academy of Spherical Arts, in Toronto. Also I will pm you later this week.

Mike

[cuerack]

Geoff, thanks for posting these images. The carved table looks very impressive indeed. Unfortunately I cant read too much of the text in the first ad but it looks to be very informative & it seems they had pretty impressive premisses in London.
Funny to think that 115 years ago somebody probably went in there & came out having ordered the table that we bought recently......makes me wonder where its been all these years

[Lize]

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?s...9&l=6498fdf678

Do you have any info on this table? I live in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and my dad bought this table a few years ago at a local auction.
Is there any way of knowing who it belonged to, and how it got to South Africa?

[100-uper]

The table was made 1894-95 and could have been imported any time after this date, possibly for a hotel billiard room or similar purpose. Although it is of fine quality it is not exceptional, and there would have been plenty made.

Hope this helps