English family of furniture retailers. Robert Gillow I (1704–72) became a freeman of the town of Lancaster in 1728 and married Agnes Fell in 1730. They had two sons, Richard Gillow I (1734–1811) and Robert Gillow II (1745–95). Richard studied architecture in London and returned to Lancaster, whereas Robert managed the London showrooms that were established in Oxford Street in 1769. The Lancaster branch engaged in a variety of activities, making furniture for the home and export markets and importing sugar, rum and, to a lesser degree, tropical woods from the West Indies. They also did architectural joinery and made billiard-tables, encouraged by the vogue for this game from the 1770s and by the proximity of the Cumbrian slate mines. The opening of their London branch attracted more customers and brought closer contact with the latest smart fashions. However, the cost of transport had to be set against the cheaper labour rates of Lancaster, and to reduce this overhead, consignments were dispatched for final assembly in London. To encourage trade, discounts were offered for joint dispatches and travelling salesmen, armed with lavishly illustrated manuscript pattern-books, actively promoted the firm’s wares. The Gillows were shrewd in producing a neat, rather conventional range of furniture derived from the designs of James Wyatt, the most fashionable architect of the last two decades of the 18th century, and from plates in the pattern-books of George Hepplewhite and Thomas Sheraton. They avoided the height of fashion, supplying instead pieces that would appeal to the burgeoning middle classes of Liverpool and Manchester, who valued good, solid, well-made furniture. Crossbanding and carving were kept to a minimum, but painted furniture that harmonized with upholstery and wallpaper was widely used from about 1770 until the 1800s, when rosewood became more fashionable. From about 1780 the firm took to stamping some of its furniture with GILLOWSLANCASTER, and in 1785 the Lancaster side of the operation branched out into upholstery. At the end of the 18th century the firm manufactured several novel types of furniture, including the Davenport, the whatnot and the ‘Imperial Extending Dining Table’, which was brought out by Richard Gillow in 1800. In the vogue for historical revivals that developed towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Gillows produced ‘Gothic’, ‘Old English’ or ‘Elizabethan’, and ‘Antique’ (Greek Revival) furniture. There was an increasing market for reproduction furniture, which clients would add to their original sets. A few items of Chippendale-style furniture, based on designs in Thomas Chippendale the elder’s Gentleman and Cabinet-maker’s Director, were also made, such as the Gothic ‘Salisbury’ Antique table.