Walk into enough South African homes furnished in the 1960s, and sooner or later you'll spot one: a spindle-back armchair in solid elm or oak, its curved arms and gently splayed legs unmistakably related to the famous Ercol chairs made across the world in England. Except this one isn't English. Flip it over, and if you're lucky, you'll find a small paper label reading simply "Lubis."
That's about as much certainty as anyone seems to have.
Lubis Furniture operated in South Africa through the 1960s, producing what collectors and dealers consistently describe as genuinely high-quality reproductions of Ercol's iconic designs — not cheap knockoffs, but careful, well-built local interpretations, right down to matching Ercol's choice of elm and oak for durability. The spindle-back construction is faithful to the original, and like the real Ercol chairs of the era, Lubis pieces were often fully upholstered, hiding the spindlework entirely beneath the cushioning — a detail only visible now on pieces that have been carefully re-covered or left deliberately bare.
The furniture itself is well documented. What's genuinely missing is everyone else. No founder's name has surfaced. No factory address. No definite founding date beyond a general sense of "the 1960s." Even dealers who've spent real time trying to track down Lubis's story come away empty-handed — the furniture speaks for itself, but the people behind it left almost no paper trail at all.
It's a strange kind of fame: instantly recognisable object, completely anonymous maker. If you know anything about Lubis Furniture — who ran it, where it operated, how it came to specialise in Ercol's designs — we'd genuinely love to hear from you. Some mysteries deserve to stay solved.