Furniture History Society

The Furniture History Society (FHS) is a registered charity in the United Kingdom and is the largest member's organisation worldwide dedicated to the history, appreciation and scholarly research of furniture.
Background.
The Furniture History Society was founded in 1964 and is based in London, with close connections at the Victoria & Albert Museum. It is an international body, recognising that neither British nor foreign furniture should be considered in isolation. Since 1965, the society's annual journal ″Furniture History" has published recent findings on British and continental European, Asian and American furniture. It also issues a quarterly newsletter.
In September 2016, the Furniture History Society started a collaboration with the University of London's Institute of Historical Research (IHR) to produce a freely accessible online resource, the "British and Irish Furniture Makers Online" (BIFMO). The initial phase of this database went online at the end of September 2017 and continues to be developed and expanded.
The society also arranges visits to private and public furniture collections around the world and organizes international symposia concerning furniture, both historic and contemporary. It gives grants to individuals requiring assistance for research and study.
The Furniture History Society is governed by a council elected by its members, which is supported by specialist officers. The council is headed by a president, who is currently Simon Swynfen Jervis, a former director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, who in 2020 succeeded Sir Nicholas Goodison, former chairman of the London Stock Exchange and expert on Matthew Bolton. Its chairman is Christopher Rowell, the British National Trust’s Curator of Furniture. Former chairmen include Sir Francis Watson, Director of the Wallace Collection and Surveyor of the Queen's Works of Art, Peter Thornton, Keeper of Furniture at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Simon Swynfen Jervis, former director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and the art historian Christopher Gallard Gilbert.