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Home    Furniture for the People: An Interview with Henry Tadros, Chairman of Ercol

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Furniture for the People: An Interview with Henry Tadros, Chairman of ercol

15 minute read

ercol furniture has been a quiet fixture in British homes for over a century. Synonymous with timeless design and solid timber craftsmanship, the company was founded in the 1920s by Italian designer, Lucian R Ercolani, on the principle of furniture being made by the people, for the people. In an era where constant newness and rapid manufacturing are commonplace, ercol is doing things differently – which means doing things the same way it always has: combining the best of traditional techniques with modern innovation to create beautiful, relevant furniture with integrity.

With a seminal legacy that spans over 100 years and countless iconic designs – among them the Butterfly chair and the Pebble nesting tables – you would be forgiven for thinking ercol might be resting on its laurels. But the brand continues to look forward. We speak with Henry Tadros, great grandson of Lucian Ercolani and the fourth generation chairman of ercol, to explore the brand’s future: how ercol respects and preserves its heritage while building a family company where quality, sustainability and British manufacturing continue to go hand-in-hand.

Chairman of ercol, Henry Tadros

Can you begin with a potted history of ercol? How did the company begin?

It was started by my great grandfather. He was an Italian immigrant, his family moved to the UK in the 1890’s. His father was a picture framer for the Uffizi gallery in Florence, so there was always a craft in the background, but he worked for the Salvation army as a carpenter in England, London. When he was in his late teens he went to night school to learn furniture design, and it kind of grew from there – he went to Wycombe and he worked with Frederick Parker and the Gommes, which became G-Plan. He was in his early thirties in 1920, and he had quite a moral viewpoint on what he wanted to do and bring to people. Post First World War he felt there was a lot of disruption in people’s lives and a lack of focus among people in Wycombe, and he wanted to give meaningful employment to people. He was a furniture designer, and a kind of industrialist, and he felt that setting up a business in Wycombe would give a real sense of purpose to the workforce, and at the same time, give him that opportunity to make a furniture company.

Pre-war it was a very different prospect to what we are now – it was dark wood furniture, hand-carved, rattan sides... It didn’t have anything that would strike it as a DNA of design. It was just what people were making in the twenties and thirties. He wasn’t really satisfied with the products and furniture we were making back then. Pre war, he went out to America for various reasons, among them to see a Shaker Furniture museum, and I think that, coupled with what he felt during the war, was really the bedrock of how he changed his designs into what we do now and what we’re known for – the mid-century pieces that everyone associates with ercol.

In the 1940s we weren't requisitioned by the government. They didn't take over our factory, though we did contribute to the war effort by making tent pegs. But because we weren't requisitioned, we kept control of our factory. Lucian understood that post war there was going to be a huge need for furniture, and this was coupled with timber rationing. And everyone knew that there wasn't much timber out there. So whatever happened, you would have to be clever and reductive in your design to make sure you use the least amount of timber possible. He had always loved the Windsor chair, that was the basis of design for chairs then, and he worked out how you could mass produce that, how you could put that into an industrialised process. He was always very keen on pushing forward the industrial process of making furniture. And then during the war, he worked out how to make it an efficient factory with hundreds of people working, making thousands of chairs a day. It gave him the time to really invest in that in the ‘40s because you could develop your processes, and that was really steam bending – he worked out how to steam bend timber in a mass way.

Founder of ercol, Lucian R Ercolani

Steam-bent timber

“The Windsor Collection, the Butterfly Chair and Stacking Chair were all what Lucian felt was furniture for the time, for the people today – they were what furniture should be in people’s homes”

At the end of the war, there was a utility trade movement, led by a UK government initiative to make low cost furniture that would go in new homes, bombed-out homes, to restart not just people's living but also the industries, post war. And we won the tender to make 100,000 4A kitchen chairs, which was a very low-cost chair in huge volumes for us at the time. And at that price, it was really like mass production on steroids, and it basically set us up as a company for the next 70, 80 years, because of the pieces that he then designed. That chair was a really utilitarian piece. It was quite small in diameter because timber was rationed. It was quite simple because that was traditionally cheapest, but the design and the form was really kind of the key idea of what ercol was going to be. And so after the kitchen chair, he then designed all the other pieces that came out of that – the Windsor collection, the Butterfly chair, Stacking chair... They were all what he felt was like furniture for the day, for the people today, rather than the very utilitarian single chair – they were what furniture should be like in people's homes.

That furniture really set the tone of what ercol is now known for, what people's parents might have had or their grandparents had, the vintage furniture that’s sold around the world.

It sounds like it started with quite a sense of social responsibility – furniture for the people made by the people – is that an ethos still runs through the business today?

I would hope so. He was, even back in the ‘20s and ‘30s, very pro union, pro giving his employees a voice and good employment. Today, we're very much the same family business – I’m the fourth generation. I always want to make furniture that is honest and is beautiful but that has a purpose as well. So from an employment point of view we hope we are like that, and as a design group like that. We just try and be as honest and as open as we can. It helps that we’re a family business, that also gives people a sense of the reason why we’re doing something, and why we’ve got to 105 years. We’ve had plenty of opportunities to sell or do other things, or change the way we do things, but we haven’t and we’re still here.

ercol chairs, including the Butterfly chair, the Stacking chair, the Windsor chair and the Quaker chair

"I always want to make furniture that is honest and is beautiful but that has a purpose as well."

ercol is well-known for its timeless designs that are built to last – you get that enduring sense of value when you buy an ercol piece. Can you give a little bit of insight into ercol’s approach to creating furniture that endures for generations, in both quality and style?

The main thing is the idea that we try to meld high tech machining with age-old craftsmanship. If you come to the factory, you'll see all the high-tech CNC machines, 5-axis copy lathes, machinery that really gives all those sorts of things that really give accuracy, efficiency, they effectively reduce the cost of the parts. That means we can spend more time and care in the assembly of the product, the finishing of the product. 

Being well made is the key thing. Obviously we have solid timber, which is very strong, and we use the age-old craft techniques of wedge joinery, mortice and tenon and dovetail joints – joints that have been used for hundreds of years. In chairs like the Windsor chair, it's the same method that's been used for the last couple of hundred years. We've updated the process so you have a clean, simple design, but at same time having that strength. And my belief is that if you make a wooden chair like this, and put that kind of effort in, then a beautiful piece of furniture will come out.

Though with chairs, you know, there is a lifespan. They might last you 20-30 years and then you might need to do something to elongate the life of them.

An ercol craftsman in the factory

Archive imagery from an ercol catalogue in the 1970s

20 – 30 years is still a significant amount of time for a chair...

I know, but I do also see vintage chairs from the ‘60s and ‘70s still being used in restaurants and cafes and that's amazing. But I would hope that a good chair would last a long time, and then you can refurbish it and it will have another life for years. By using solid timber in a well-crafted way, and we’re going off in a bit of a tangent here, but you're elongating the life of the tree as well, and then the embodied carbon in the piece.

If we say a tree is mature at 70 years, then in the next 10 to 15 years, it might slowly die, fall down, decompose, get burned, and the carbon will get released into the atmosphere. But if you cut down the tree at 70, when it’s in its prime, and you make it into beautiful furniture, and then that beautiful furniture lasts another 100 years, you're locking up that carbon in the furniture. That's something that we're going to be talking about a lot over the next year.

"My great grandfather talked about ‘the joy of joy of the tree’; giving it the purpose of life. That tree, once you cut it down, goes into people's homes and it makes beautiful furniture that they can enjoy."

Sustainability is so much a part of the conversation when it comes to people’s choices these days. What is ercol’s philosophy when it comes to sustainability?

About a year ago I did a talk at the Victoria and Albert Museum. They had a symposium called ‘Make Good Symposium', talking about materials, and I was talking about our historic use of British timber. While researching I was finding quotes from my great grandfather in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and he was saying essentially the same thing as we're now saying today. He called it ‘the joy of joy of the tree’; giving it the purpose of life. That tree, once you cut it down, goes into people's homes and it makes beautiful furniture that they can enjoy. There's a purpose for it. He was also talking about what we now call sustainable forest management. So really, working in solid timber and making in the UK, we've always had that as a core part of our business. It's just a sustainable industry.

It's inbuilt.

It's inbuilt because you're cutting down wooden trees and then you're keeping the timber for far longer. Obviously it's sustainable trees. So it becomes a good thing to cut down the tree, rather than a bad thing. Right now our main initiative is the Grown in Britain scheme, where we're now trying to reduce our supply chain from Europe and use as much timber from Britain as possible. And there's a great resource of ash in the country.

Firstly, it's naturally inherent; if you're making solid wood furniture without solvents, for example, then it's a sustainable practice. Secondly, we're now trying to come back to using some British timber, and so are starting our journey with Grown in Britain (GiB) to do to do this and reduce supply chains, also bring back some of our outsourced pieces back into the factory in the UK, especially chairs.

We are looking at our carbon scope, it's not set, but we will over time start trying to work towards more certification. I really believe that as a business we're already there to some degree, it's just we now need to formalise what we’ve always known as a sustainable business.

Joinery work in the ercol factory

Wood prepared for furniture joinery

You mentioned locally-sourced materials, and I noticed that you use ash, oak, and some walnut, whereas traditionally ercol would have used a lot of beech and elm. Is that part of the reason?

Wycombe was the centre of furniture making because it was set in the Chilterns, and there were loads of beech trees and a large amount of elm trees in the South, and that was the basis of what you made furniture with. In the 1980s, Dutch elm disease basically killed all the elm in Britain. That was our major timber – the beech would be the framework and the elm would be the face, the seat, the tabletop, what people see: the grain. And when that went, we had to find a new source for it. So we went to America and we bought out there for 10-15 years, and then Dutch elm disease made that not possible, so we moved to Europe, to sawmills in Northern Italy – all FSC accredited, very good sawmills. But then they found it hard to find elm as well. And we had seen this happening gradually over 10 years or so. So we started to introduce some things in oak and ash, and then we decided to make the final decision that to source elm was just too hard. So we'd move all of the elm and beech over to just solid ash.

Walnut is American walnut that's sent to Europe. So it's not particularly sustainable, but there's a market for it, so that's where we are with that.

Right now we've probably got 5% British ash and we hope to move to 100% British ash over the coming years. But there's a supply chain issue that we have to deal with because it's much cheaper still to buy from Italy than it is from England. So we're working with suppliers to bridge that gap and to make it a parity.

So though Dutch elm disease forced the change, I found that ash was such a beautiful timber. It stains really nicely, so it's very versatile with a lovely grain. We've actually found now that British ash is even more beautiful than European ash. Depends what your term of beauty is, but European ash is very straight, very clean. It's quite funny: because we don't actually look after our trees very well in Britain, and we have pests – squirrels and deer which bite the trees, it actually gives British trees a bit more character and grain. Which harks back a little bit to old English elm, which was really kind of burr, there was a huge amount of wildness to the grain. So we're actually finding that going back to British ash gives a little bit more life to the piece, which I like.

"It's quite funny: because we don't actually look after our trees very well in Britain, and we have pests which bite the trees, it actually gives British trees a little bit more character and grain. So we're actually finding that going back to British ash gives a little bit more life to the piece, which I like."

That's why you buy a wooden piece of furniture – it's got that character, each piece is going to have its own unique grain. The use of solid wood is a real hallmark of ercol. Can you talk us through some of the selection and sourcing processes? How does the choice of materials influence the design, the construction and the overall quality of the furniture?

Our UK factory is only set up to do solid wood, that's what we do. Veneer is a completely different process.

With ercol, we do products in ash or oak. We’re launching more new collections this year, and they're all ash, because I feel that is the best way to go. We've got a couple of oak collections also, in fact most of our outsourced product is oak, not ash.  Right now I feel like we need to push more in ash, mainly because we know that we can get British-grown ash. So at some point we hope to move that ash product over to Grown in Britain, so that we can say that most of the product that we make in our factory is Grown in Britain and made in Britain. It's a nice story.

Working out what timber we use for L.Ercolani is quite simple for me, it's ash, and if it's applicable for the market, I’ll do it in walnut as well. We also work in the commercial market with L.Ercolani, and ash gives us the option to have different stains and colours and be a bit more versatile to suit various projects as required. If you're working with oak, then it's only oak, because it can't be stained as nicely. So that gives us a little bit of flexibility there.

Final thing is that we do know that there's probably a finite supply of ash, because we also have ash dieback which is killing all the ash trees, which is not helpful.

Wood prepared for joinery in the ercol factory

I want to talk a little bit about ercol and the development of the L.Ercolani brand. So first of all, can you describe the ercol aesthetic? What is the design direction and how has that evolved over time?

We have our roots in the classic, mid-century style that we designed the '50s, and today I want us to be respectful of the heritage and the history of what we're doing: making commercial, well-priced furniture that works for most people's homes in Britain and hopefully abroad, in solid wood, and that has clear ercol DNA to it. Ercol furniture, new and old, is a bit broader in its spectrum than L.Ercolani, it can work at different price points, it can be outsourced, it can be insourced. I'm trying to make an honest furniture business that is well made but also approachable for a large amount of people in the country.

As your great grandfather founded the company, 'furniture for the people'. Maintaining that sense of heritage.

I do have to acknowledge, that it's not as affordable as going to Ikea. But if they're able to afford it, then I know that we've been as honest as possible and that we're making it the best type of dining table we can.

LSA METROPOLITAN drinkware on an ercol Pebble Nest of Tables in walnut

L.Ercolani was launched a few years ago, named after your great grandfather, the original founder. Can you talk me through the identity of that brand and the motivation behind its inception?

When I started at ercol 12 years ago I was working in international sales, and I started focusing on the classic designs, the mid-century pieces with a few more modern pieces that we had designed, such as the desk by Matthew Hilton. This area grew – we started working more in Europe and America and in the Far East, started developing new pieces and working towards more of the higher end of the residential market. Trying to really use materials and craft and then put as much work into making beautiful pieces, and talk to a more elevated customer base.

And we ran into a problem. We had just designed the Pennon table with Norm Architects – a wonderful Danish design firm – and we had a raft of new collections, full collections that we were going to be launching. But the problem was that we were trying to sell a Pennon table for £8,000 underneath the ercol name to our established large retail market stretching across a host of different customers. It wasn't a very clear brand message for people as to why these items were at elevated prices, so we decided to rebrand what was the international product and the new, modern pieces that we were doing with named designers into L.Ercolani. Obviously, we called it L.Ercolani as an homage to Lucian, and we put his real design classics in there because they are the true DNA of all of our business. I felt like he, with those early ercol classics, was a very forward-thinking designer. I really felt that those archival pieces are the DNA and we owe everything to them.

I'm also very interested in moving forward, having modern designs but that are influenced and based on the classic ideas of what we were doing. Something like the Io table by Lars Beller Fejtland, or the Pennon table, or Jonas Wagell’s Grade sofa are all more modern, but using our techniques and the DNA of the past. I can see there's not the DNA of the classic ercol piece, but I look at the quality, the craft, the materials, and I doubt anyone else in the UK could make it in a factory setting like ourselves. I think smaller workshops probably focus on that kind of thing, but as a wooden furniture manufacturer, there’s not many people who can do something like that and so that's where I see the 'ercol-ness' coming out.

"I'm very interested in moving forward, having modern designs but that are influenced and based on the classic ideas of what we were doing... More modern, but using our techniques and the DNA of the past."

I get the sense that the design is always really driven by the craft, and I suppose that's how you, how L.Ercolani specifically, respects and maintains that original DNA whilst heading in a new, very forward thinking direction.

We had all the designers come into the factory to understand the processes of what we do in the factory before then designing the pieces. So they really understood what we do, before they were able to design the pieces for us.

How do you select those designers that you work with? You mentioned Norm Architects ...

I knew them and I had an idea of what I wanted L.Ercolani to be. I think they fitted quite nicely – they call themselves 'soft minimalism', and I liked the lines of the designs that they were doing. I would say L.Ercolani is aligned with that, but that’s layered with an element of warmth. So I had that in my mind and Norm fitted perfectly, and Lars [Beller Fjetland] and Jonas [Wagell] just worked like satellites around them, so it came together nicely. We haven't really done anything new with them since then. And while I love what those three designers and design groups did for us, I’m now actually looking at L.Ercolani more to see who I can work with on British design. Because I suppose over the last few years I've realised that it's a bit sad that there's no British furniture manufacturer known around the world. As we've been a British furniture manufacturer for 100 years, it would be nice to do something with a British designer. So the next step for me would be working out who that might be. I still think we'll work with international designers in the future, because I want us to be a global brand, but I want us to establish ourselves as an interesting, fresh and modern British furniture manufacturer.

An assembly list from the ercol factory

A craftsman assembling a piece of ercol furniture

We've talked about skilled craft and I'm just wondering if you can share your thoughts on the value of skilled craft in modern furniture making.

Oh it's invaluable, basically. Having that skill is the only way that you can really make long-lasting, beautiful furniture. It's actually a very hard skill to find. We have made quite good headway – with 130 employees in the business, we've got 2,150 years worth of experience among those employees; most people have worked 20, 30, 40 years, and some people up to 50 – well, one person working up to 59 years so far. One person who has been there for 20 years, that's a huge amount of skill. Someone who's been there for 40 years is mind boggling. And it's invaluable because you can't do some of the processes without having done it for a couple of years. If we want to get a skilled employee now it's hard. So we have introduced a very good apprentice scheme; we currently have about 15, 16, 17 apprentices on the boards, including one female apprentice, which we're very happy with. And we draw on the skills of the older practitioners, who've been there for 40-50 years, to pass on their knowledge to the younger apprentices.

Invaluable craftsmanship really comes down to people. You can have all the machines and have all the knowledge of how to do it, but if you don't have the person, you can’t actually do it, and it's worthless. So we spend a lot of time making sure that we have that good workforce.

"Invaluable craftsmanship really comes down to people. You can have all the machines and have all the knowledge of how to do it, but if you don't have the person, you can’t actually do it, and it's worthless."

Why do you think people choose ercol or L.Ercolani furniture?

With ercol, we have been very visible for 100 years. Parents and grandparents received it as a wedding present or family members passed it on, or they remember an aunt who had an ercol chair. It’s very much in the hidden psyche of people. It’s recognising the furniture from your childhood and it bringing back memories when you are buying a new piece of furniture yourself. 

Today, I hope that we do a good job of communicating to people that we're obviously still making furniture. It’s a prestigious and aspirational purchase to a lot of people in the UK. There aren’t many mid to mid-high residential stores that have anything other than imported furniture. So, I hope we’re the ‘real deal’ of UK furniture where people choose to go.

With L.Ercolani, it's a bit of a different prospect because a lot of the time we're talking to people who don't know us. Whether it's in the architectural market, or designers and specifiers who are younger and more inexperienced ... No one's particularly familiar with L.Ercolani because it's a new brand that we're just starting to get out there.

A cursed time ...

A cursed time, definitely. We finally did have a soft launch in the UK in September 2021, but it never had the marketing kind of launch that we wanted to. COVID happened. We can't complain about it, we can just keep on talking about it. But we have had a very good reception to the brand, the history, because it's got everything, it's got the design, it's got the heritage, it's got the craftsmanship, made in the UK and, at least for the A&D market, is very well-priced for contract and hospitality. And though it is a premium price product, it's not a massively premium priced product in that market.

The LSA CASK Whisky Set on an ercol Pebble Nest of Tables in walnut

Do you think people buy it for emotional reasons, for practical reasons ...

I think with ercol it's definitely both emotional and practical. With L.Ercolani, it's a different brand so we are able to talk to new people. We're now kind of restarting what we did 100 years ago.

ercol is a family business. For you, as the fourth generation steward of that business, what's your vision for the next generation of ercol?

Well, there's a lot to do! I'm exceedingly proud of where we are. Right now I'm sitting in Seattle talking to people like Walmart and various other huge corporate firms in America, talking about selling our furniture to them. So it's amazing how, from an Italian furniture designer from the 1920s, we’ve now managed to get to things like that.

What I want us to do is keep on doing what we're doing – making our furniture in the factory, and I want to make more furniture in the factory and to be able to employ more people and give them a better quality of work. I want us to use as much local timber as possible. I want us to really get a handle on the sustainable side of things.

And then with the design... I feel like we have so much to talk about. With ercol it’s keeping us relevant and moving the conversation in the way that we want to, and not being pulled back to being traditional, because that's just how the traditional retail market is. I want us to make designs I feel are relevant to us; are sympathetic to our skills and our history.

And then with L.Ercolani it's to try and push the boundaries a little bit. It's to try and make furniture that is beautiful, well-crafted and is fresh for us in that way. I look at a lot of companies and I feel that they just rely on their classics, and they might sell them very well but they're not really looking forward. With L.Ercolani I really want to use that as a brand to go forwards in design and move what people might associate with ercol, pushing us further into whatever world that might be.

Henry Tadros, chairman of ercol

An ercol Pebble Nest of Tables

"I want us to make designs I feel are relevant to us; are sympathetic to our skills and our history."

Thank you so much for your time, Henry. On a personal level, I want to tell you that I happen to have some chairs that ended up in the L.Ercolani collection. They are beautiful – I know that they'll be in my home forever and I’ll be able to hand them to my children. So thank you for all the work that you do.

Well, thank you. You know that's wonderful. Those stories are everything really – just knowing that the pieces of furniture are appreciated, loved and then they might have another life in the next generation. There is a fifth generation of ercol, but they're all under eight years old. There's a lot of cousins basically. So it's a few years until they're old enough to start looking at that. But I think that's my aim, to get it to get it to that fifth generation. It's always been passed down from person to person.

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