Owen Brothers

I can usually find a smidgeon of information about a particular topic of interest, but this time I have drawn a complete blank. I know the Forum has recently been discussing the Palace Yard and / or Little Palace Yard, but I can find no reference to Owen Brothers, in the Palace Yard on the Forum or elsewhere. The company was involved in textile design and / or manufacture. My initial assumption was that they were involved in silk weaving on Jacquard looms as a cutting in the Coventry Evening Telegraph reported that having served a seven year apprenticeship with Owen Brothers, the subject of the newspaper report moved to Stevens becoming head designer for twenty years before Stevens were bombed out in the Coventry Blitz. The cutting dates from the early 60s but I am probably hopelessly wrong about this?!! I am familiar with the silk manufacturers in Coventry and elsewhere and can find no reference to them except that they produced a silk 'Phoebus and Aurora' which has a credit woven in the silk picture with the wording 'Designed by Owen Bros'. Does this indicate they were solely designers and not manufacturers? Stevens produced the same picture in 1888. It was not unusual to have the same picture produced by more than one silk manufacturer as the designers appeared to have 'owned' their own design work and sold it to different manufacturers. W.H. Grant and Thomas Stevens are particularly noted for this, especially with some of their respective woven postcards. For such an important industry, no research seems to have been published on this aspect of production as far as I am aware!! If Forum members can offer any help, I would be grateful. Even a pointer in the right direction would not come amiss. I should add that the two standard works on Stevengraphs, Sprake and Darby's 'Stevengraphs' and Geoffrey A. Godden's 'Stevengraphs' only have information from the same Telegraph article as mine!!!

Harrier, there are a few adverts for staff at Owen Bros in Palace Yard Earl Street in 1910 to 1913. In 1924 a Stephen George Poole who was a prominent Coventry citizen died. He was born in Earlsdon in 1861 and was apprenticed to Owen Bros, ribbon designers, so this would have been in the 1870's. There is an odd announcement in 1906 that says, partnership dissolved, Frederick Howard Dalton, Joseph George Reaves and Francis Marsden Fretton, designers and draughtsmen, Palace Yard, Earl Street, under the style of Owen Bros, so far as concerns Frederick Howard Dalton. Don't know if you can make any sense of that!

Hi, here's some info from the directories. The first image is from the 1874 directory.

Thanks Annewiggy and Heathite. I have located the date of the cutting as after Nov 10th and before Dec 14th 1965, so when it cools down a bit, it will be a trip down to the Coventry archives and a microfiche search!!!!

Harrier. 19th November 1965, would you like me to email you a copy? There is also an article in 1962 about his golden wedding.

Thank you, that is very kind. However I think my cutting may be the 19th November one. My original 'date guess' was from the back of the cutting where there was a snippet about an Hans Eworth exhibition in Leicester, 'finishing on November 28th before moving to the National Portrait Gallery in London on December 14th'. I contacted the Gallery and they were able to give me the year as 1965!!! Co-incidentally, the rest of the article was about the ruined Astley Church and the remnants of Astley Castle, Astley being a hamlet between Coventry and Nuneaton. 50 years ago, my wife and I had our wedding reception in the castle!!

Yes, that is the one Harrier, I have found the back of the page and it is about the painting and Astley Castle. If you still want me to email it let me know.

Yes please because mine is trimmed as to be almost unreadable.

Further to our conversation, the Yardley I have with an address is A. Yardley, 20 Packard Street, initially listed as Kenilworth but later amended to Warwick. He seems to have joined Godiva Harriers in 1920.

Despite my doubts about Stevens in the cuttings you sent, Annewiggy, the statement made about Thomas Stevens moving to Leek after his factory was destroyed in the Coventry Blitz, is correct! That will teach me! In fact Stevens amalgamated with the Leek silk weavers of Brough, Nicholson and Hall. Looking at their production lists, quite a few of their items on e-bay are listed as 'Stevengraphs'. Which leads me to wonder how each article produced under the new agreement was attributed. Did the designers who moved from Coventry to Leek, still regard their work as 'Stevengraphs'; which seems to be the case from the quotes in the other cutting. Still further investigation is required.