About Us

The High Wycombe Furniture Archive (HWFA) is part of the Research Centre for Furniture at Buckinghamshire New University in High Wycombe.  The archive contains photographic and print material relating to furniture companies in the High Wycombe region, primarily from Ercol Limited and E. Gomme Limited (G-Plan).

The digitisation of our collections and the creation of the HWeFA website is funded by a Resource Enhancement Grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).  Funding was granted by the AHRC in March 2006, and work began in earnest with the appointment of the Technical Digital Archivist and Research Assistant in September 2006. The first stage of the project was completed in August 2009, when the website was first launched, but material is added to the website on a regular basis. It has become an important asset for the heritage of British furniture. 

The HWeFA website and cataloguing database have been created using the 'Asset Bank' image management system.  Cataloguing fields are based on the Dublin Core metadata standard and a major source for vocabulary is the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT).  The digitisation of the archive is being carried out using an Epson Perfection V750 Pro scanner, Epson GT-15000 scanner, Colortrac SmartLF GxT42 scanner and Nikon D70 and 2DX cameras.

The images on our website are free to download for educational and personal use only.  If you wish to use our digitised material for any other purpose, you must contact us.  We make every attempt to comply with copyright regulations but cannot be held responsible for copyright violations due to unauthorised re-use of our material.  Copyright for most of the images in our archive was held by the individual furniture companies.  If you believe you own copyright for any of the material you see on our website, please contact us.

If you have an interest in our project or any of our images, please feel free to contact us using the "Contact Us" form or at:

Enrico Garofalo - Current Coordinator

Previous Project Team

Dr Helena Chance - Senior Lecturer

Prof. Jake Kaner - Principal Investigator

Sharon Grover - Co-Investigator

Enrico Garofalo - IT Technician/Technical Digital Archivist

Previous Team Members  With thanks to:

Emma Crocker -  Research Assistant

Stephen Gange-Moody - Research Assistant 

Oliver Heal -  Research Assistant

Lisa Hodgkins - Technical Digital Archivist

Scott Harper -  Research Contributor

Craig Moore - Technical Digital Archivist

Details of our collections:

 E. Gomme Limited, including G-Plan (1920s-1980s) Albums and loose photographs of room sets and furniture models ; watercolours in preparation for advertisements ; sales catalogues ; Data Sales Books ; G-Plan New Models folders ; artwork, plans and designs for G-Plan furniture ; plans and designs for G-Plan furniture by Ib Kofod-Larsen.

Ercol Furniture Limited (1950s-1980s) Photographic prints, negatives and transparencies of furniture models and room sets ;  photographic prints, negatives and transparencies of furniture manufacturing, both at Ercol and at W Skull Limited ; photographic prints, negatives and transparencies of woodland, timber yards (including Latimer?s) and timber processing; photographic prints, negatives and transparencies of, or in preparation for, Ercol displays and contributions to trade shows in the UK and abroad, including the exhibition held in Hyde Park in 1977 to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of HM Queen Elizabeth II.

Furniture Trade Unions (1898-1968) Reports and minutes relating to the proceedings of furniture industry societies and trade unions.

W Skull Ltd (1897 - 1940s) A comprehensive range of purchase receipts between 1897 and 1903 illustrate the broad spectrum of  trade suppliers, along with photographic images of furniture models.

Acknowledgements. Our thanks go to everyone who has helped with the project, including (in alphabetical order): Arts and Humanities Research Council ; Asset Bank, in particular - Ben Browning, Matt Stephenson and Martin Wilson ; Roger Bennett ; Jean Boreham ; Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, in particular - Laura Robertson ; Leslie Dandy ; Tom Dean ; Design Archives, Brighton University ; Donald and Leslie Gomme ; HWeFA Advisory Group ; High Wycombe Local Studies Library and the SWOP Project, in particular - Chris Featherstone, Mike Dewey and Harvey Coltman ; Jerry Gull ; David James ; Edgar Mantz ; Bill & Liz Murray ; Pat Pedel ; Roger Pearce ; Mike Pengelly ; Joe Perfect ; Prof. Hew Reid ; Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, in particular - Liz Williams ; Brian Rodgers ; John Rutland ; Paul Springer ; Edward Tadross ; VADS, in particular - Mick Eadie ; Keith Wilkins ; Wycombe Museum, in particular - Dr. Catherine Grigg and Dora Parr.