The cabinet-maker George Oakley (d. 1840) was among the specialist manufacturers of Grecian-black calamander furniture, ormolu-enriched in the French fashion and with 'buhl' inlay. He ran one of the more successful Regency London firms with various associates producing stylish furniture for, among others, the Prince of Wales, later George IV (see The Dictionary of English Furniture-Makers, Leeds, 1986, pp. 654-660).

Leonard Rosoman O.B.E. R.A (1913-2012) was a painter, illustrator, muralist and celebrated war artist. Born in London in 1913 he studied at the King Edward VII School of Art in Newcastle, before returning to London to the Royal Academy schools and the Central School of Art. Commissioned into the Auxiliary Fire Service on the outbreak of war in 1939, his graphic rendering of a collapsed wall caught the attention of the legendary Director of the National Gallery, Kenneth Clark, who invited Rosoman to join the group of official war artists, whose number included Graham Sutherland, David Bomberg, Duncan Grant, Eliot Hodgkin, L. S. Lowry and Dame Laura Knight. Following the war Rosoman worked both as an artist and as a teacher at the Camberwell School of Art, Edinburgh College of Art, and the Royal College of Art , where he taught such artist as Peter Blake and David Hockney.