William Millington

1880 - 1962

William Millington was born in Lancaster, England and attended Friends High School for Boys and Storey Institute of Science and Art, then affiliated with the Royal College of Art in South Kensington, England. He served his apprenticeship with Gillow & Co., in Lancaster from 1894 to 1900.

Soon after he was married, and in 1910 moved to New York where he worked for W. & J. Sloane for seven years under Lachlan McLachlan.

Robert W. Irwin persuaded him to come to the mid-west in 1917 to work for the Phoenix Furniture Co., where he stayed until 1925.

Millington visited Paris with a delegation to the 1925 Paris Exposition as a representative of the U. S. Department of Commerce at the time Herbert Hoover was Secretary of Commerce. In 1926 he joined the Baker Furniture Co. where he remained as senior designer and officer of that company until his death on December 6, 1962, at the age of 83.  

He was a director of David Wolcott Kendall School of Design, and he served as president of the Grand Rapids Furniture Designers Association in 1950.