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 MERSMAN TABLES
by Fred Taylor
THEY'RE EVERYWHERE!
Any antique shop that has more than three pieces of
Colonial Revival furniture is almost certain to have a
Mersman table somewhere in the joint. Why? Because
Mersman made millions of them. During the 100+ year life
of the company it churned out over 30 million tables. In
the 1920's the company bragged that one out of ten
tables in American homes was a Mersman. It probably was
more than that. Not bad coming from a company that
started out as a sawmill.
J. B. Mersman was a 19th century sawyer with mills in
Angola and Kendallville in extreme northeastern Indiana.
He relocated his operations across the state line to
Ottoville, Ohio where he started making tables around
1876 under the name Mersman Tables when the lumber
business turned soft. From his first table he went on to
make beds and bed parts. So successful was he that the
nearby city of Celina, OH solicited him to build a
factory there and provided $7500 of seed money for the
operation. That turned out to be a good investment by
the city fathers. He was up and running in Celina by
1900 making beds, library tables and dining tables.
But the precision details that were required to
successfully produce large volumes of furniture were not
to the liking of the old sawmill operator. He turned the
business over to his two oldest sons, Edward and Walter,
and their partner Henry Lenartz, a banker. With that out
of the way he headed for Arkansas to start up another
sawmill operation. The company continued operation under
the new name Lenartz and Mersman Brothers until 1906
when Edmund Brandts bought out Lenartz. The company
became known as Mersman Brothers and Brandts Company and
later that year was incorporated under the slightly
altered name of Mersman Brothers Brandts Company. At
that point it employed over 100 workers producing medium
quality dining tables for shipment throughout the
country.
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A Mersman Colonial Revival "surf
board" lamp table. (Courtesy Swedberg,
"Furniture of the Depression Era", Collector Books.) |
In the 1920's the company was producing an
extraordinary line of dining and occasional tables. One
of its strongest sellers was the "davenport" table, the
company name for what is now known as a sofa table. In
1928 alone it offered 139 varieties of davenport tables
ranging in price from $12.00 to $80.00, a princely sum
in 1928. The company had changed its name again in 1927
and was now known as The Mersman Bros. Corporation.
While still home based in Celina, OH the company had
warehouses scattered across the country in major
metropolitan areas including New York, Kansas City,
Milwaukee, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles
and Minneapolis.
The product offerings in the 1920's and 1930's included
a number of lines of dining tables and bedroom
furnishings but the concentration was clearly on
occasional and special purpose tables. A sample product
listing in 1929 included library tables, davenport
tables, davenport extension tables, console tables with
or without mirrors, gateleg tables, coffee tables (among
the very first) and radio table cabinets. The
manufacture of radio cabinets became an important part
of the business, tracking the ever-growing popularity of
the new medium.
cont'd
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