Category: Buy Secondhand
I confess I know next to nothing about Jack Grimble apart from what’s in the comments on this post on Facebook and what’s evident in the listings that crop up on eBay occasionally. Based in Cromer, Norfolk. Active in the mid-20th century. A very personal style that’s a bit Arts and Crafts, a bit Hobbit-grotto-cum-Tudor-fantasy. His pieces that lean into the former are right up my street, the latter much less so.
I included a piece by Grimble in an eBaywatch back in April. He’s been on my mental to do list for a while. I’d like, one day, to write a proper profile because his work fascinates me.
In anticipation of that profile, I decided to write this week’s eBaywatch entirely on Mr Grimble. Unfortunately, there’s not a huge range of things available on eBay UK right now. So I’ll expand the scope to other online sellers plus sold pieces that I’ve come across.
Let’s go.
Pieces that come up most frequently are coffee tables and stools. This coffee table is pretty typical.
It comes complete with a typical Grimble signature on one of the legs:
There’s a cheaper, but more battered, example here, complete with celtic motif inset on the table top.
Stools come in a few variations. The first is like a mini-version of the coffee tables like this.
The listing claims that it is from around 1930. I have no idea if that’s true but the signature is one I’ve not seen before, initials rather than his name in full, suggesting that it might come from a different period to the more common style.
Here’s another, a bit smaller. This one also has just initials. Perhaps that was his style for stools.
Elsewhere, away from eBay, this milking stool is another of Grimble’s regular styles.
I really like the irregular texture on the seat.
Over at Mallams auctions, this coffee-table-or-is-it-a-bench sold back in 2023. This is definitely more my thing, the heft and irregularity of the the top make me think of George Nakashima.
It features yet another style of signature. I’m giving up trying to guess.
In the April eBaywatch that I mentioned earlier I included a kitchen dresser. A big monster of a piece of furniture. Kitchen dressers aren’t really a thing these days, not like sideboards or credenzas or whatever you want to call them, but I was seduced by so much Grimbleness in one monumental piece of furniture.
I thought that one on eBay was amazing and then I discovered this one that sold last year via Auctionet. The Tudor flourishes; the solidity of all that oak; the irregularity of the back slats; the personal touch of the hand-carved signature. Swoon.
Back to eBay and to pieces currently available, if the irregularity of the slats behind this dresser is your thing, perhaps you might like this stool.
Great grain and patina.
That’s it! Happy hunting.
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