A SIMPLE chair put the Oxford-based Minty furniture firm on the road to success. The firm’s founder, Mr N E E Minty, who opened a shop at 45 High Street in 1880, produced a wicker chair called the Varsity in a workshop at the back.

The cheapest version in 1925 cost £1 17s 6d (£1.75) and it quickly became a ‘must have’ item at home and overseas. It was said that every undergraduate bought one.

The firm’s advertising material proclaimed that “father would no longer need to rest his feet on the mantelpiece for three hours”.

Instead, he would be able to rest his “trunk, head, limbs, even hands” in the comfortable Varsity.

It was the first of a range of products which were to make Minty a household name and earn it a reputation for quality and comforts. It exported all over the world.

Mr Minty, who was born in Oxford in 1860, quickly made his mark. Increasing business led to the purchase of 44 High Street and later the shop was enlarged by the removal of the workshop to a factory in Cherwell Street, St Clement's.

During the First World War, Minty turned its skills to work of national importance and made canvas goods for the armed forces, including stretchers and tents.

After the war, the Cherwell Street works reverted to upholstery and cabinet production, but the experience gained in tent-making was not wasted.

Mr Minty continued to make tents and marquees and set up a subsidiary department dealing in the hire of tents for agricultural shows, college balls, wedding receptions and other functions.

Minty shops were opened in London in 1920 and Manchester in 1932 and the firm appointed selling agents in other major towns.

The factory, which had been enlarged to cope with increased demand, was turned over to war work again during the Second World War and produced tents, aircraft covers, mobile repair units and various items of wooden equipment.

Mr Minty, who died in 1934, was succeeded as chairman by Ben Bowles, who had joined the firm as a junior and had risen to managing director.

The Minty family link was maintained by Mr Minty’s son Edward, who became the general manager.

The firm continued to flourish with Mr Bowles’s son, Bill, as managing director, but production was hampered by operations being spread around five separate buildings, three of which had two floors.

A new £100,000 purpose-built factory and showroom opened on the Horspath Road industrial estate, in Cowley, in 1966.

But in 1992, in the face of difficult trading conditions, the firm went into receivership.

Two years later, it was sold for £1.1m to rival Cornwell Parker and the factory was closed, ending more than a century of Minty production in Oxford.