Lucian Ercolani, founder of Ercol

Lucian Ercolani (1888-1976) is one of the great names of 20th-century British furniture. Born in Italy and emigrated as a child to England, he founded in 1920 in High Wycombe the Ercol manufactory, which became in a few decades the emblematic publisher of British bentwood beech furniture. His revisited Windsor chair, Butterfly Chair, Quaker chair and elm and beech coffee tables equipped British interiors in the 1950s and 60s and embodied an original way, neither Scandinavian nor American, but deeply British.