Alex Martin

Furniture maker

Alexander Martin was a Glasgow firm of cabinetmakers and upholsterers, based at 14 Dobbie's Loan and 17 North Wallace Street (a corner site) in the early 20th century. 1 These premises had originally belonged to furniture makers Ferguson, Allan & Co., established in 1879–80. Following Ferguson's death, the business with its stock-in-trade, machinery and plant was offered for sale, and was bought in 1897 by an Alexander Martin 'cabinet manufacturer's designer and manager'. 2

Alexander Martin has not yet been definitively identified, and there are several possible candidates with that name. The most likely was a joiner's son and apprentice architect, born in Leith, Edinburgh, around 1864. He appears in the Glasgow Post Office directories from 1891 as a 'designer' working for Cunningham & Smith, sofa-frame and bedding makers in North Wallace Street, Townhead, and living in Dennistoun. 3 Martin and his company disppear from the record around 1909.

Notes:

1: Glasgow Post Office directories, 1897–1909.

2: Glasgow Herald, 1 March 1897, p. 13; Edinburgh Gazette, 7 May 1897, p. 441.

3: Census information, www.ancestry.co.uk [accessed 26 June 2012]; Glasgow Post Office Directory, 1891–2, p. 435.

'Mackintosh Architecture' led by The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council; with additional support from The Monument Trust, The Pilgrim Trust, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art; and collaborative input from Historic Scotland and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.