Gullachsen Furniture Company

Occasionally I receive an email from somewhere distant asking about Gullachsen & Sons the furniture makers, often they have piece of furniture with the name on and naturally they research on the google machine.

Yes, I am related to the Newcastle furniture maker and hopefully I can provide a little history of the firm and how I am a photographer and not a furniture maker.

In 1880’s my Great grandfather Lorentz Herman Gullachsen  ( 1846 – 1912 ) moved from Bergen, Norway to Newcastle on Tyne and established a Furniture making company initially it was called ‘Carnegie and Gullachsen’, it appeared to be very successful and the company also provided quality fixtures for the ships that were made in Newcastle’s Shipyards, the skills that my Great Grandfather had were learned in Norway but must have expanded into a large factory as there is evidence with advertising signs some of which still are the be found in the Beamish Living Museum .

The Initial company was a partnership ‘Carnegie and Gullachsen’ as there is a record in 1883 , by 1890 the companies had become split and Gullachsen traded as Gullachsen & Sons later.

In the 1920’s there was a fire at the factory and with the depression sadly the company cease trading, the sons, one was my grandfather (Lorentz Willoughby ) were then left without a job so initially became a landlord at the George in Macclesfield and then move south with his youngest son, my father.

My Grandfather Lorentz Willoughby Gullachsen  died in 1951 in Birmingham where he and my father Willoughby GUS Gullachsen had moved to before the War in 1936 .

My Father was apprenticed to a photographer then worked at a commercial studio in Birmingham called Siviter Smith, then went on to join the RAF as a photographer 1939-45. He enjoyed a long career as a theatre & tv stills photographer working in Birmingham till 2000 – he died in 2013.

I still own a couple of Gullachsen furnishing pieces, one in my office is a secretaire  based on a chippendale design and the other is an art nouveau coal scuttle – I am not sure it was made by the company, but it was certainly my Grandfathers as it was passed down from my father.

I often wonder if the business had survived the great depression  my life would have been with the furniture business? But I know my passion for photography came about not because my father was a photographer, but because I became totally passionate about the art of the medium, I would take pictures whatever my ‘job’ was.

I am proud of my heritage and know that the name of Gullachsen shall live on even if its just on a number of old pieces of furniture?