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.