N Lee And Sons Quality 1960’S Long Teak Sideboard

N Lee and Sons quality 1960’s long teak sideboard

We could write a long description about the design , but really the photos tell you far more !

N Lee and Sons were the last British maker still to use traditional cabinet making skills to make Mid-Century furniture. Features like the solid teak fronts and Japanese oak drawers joined by hand cut dovetails were what they were known for in the Furniture trade at a time when all their competitors had long moved to using machines for dovetailing. Their sideboards all share that feature and they’re easily recognisable as a result. All are extremely heavy and none were made in large numbers. They made around a dozen different sideboards during the 1960’s and were a small company by this time so none were sold in large numbers.

Over the years a number of sellers have described Lees sideboards as by Archie Shine and designed by Robert Heritage, but they’re far better made than even the best Shine sideboards. The 2 factories were very near each other.

Condition
Cleaned and oiled and looking great with no obvious marks or damage. As with all vintage pieces you must expect to see some minor signs of wear if you look very closely.

Notes
N Lee and Sons were a well known small maker in the trade from around 1930 until they closed in about 1969. It’s a firm we rediscovered a few years ago on one of our trips to The British Library to go through original trade magazines. We’ve spent a lot of time and money to find out more of them including tracing descendants of Nathan Lee who founded the company in the early 20th Century.

We’ve traced around a dozen different sideboard models that they made in the 1960’s, most designed by a then well known design team called Ward and Austin. All are recognisable because of the solid Japanese oak drawers with solid teak or afrormosia fronts with beautiful hand cut dovetails. They were the only remaining British Mid-Century company to be making pieces in the traditional way as all others had moved to machine cutting dovetails by the end of the 1950’s, and many well before that.