Clearview National September 2017 - Issue 190 | Page 93

TIMBER
We see our role as supporting our sector of
the industry with the highest quality products
that enable the joinery manufacturer to justify
their prices and margins. And now we want to
highlight the skills with which timber products
and fittings are brought into our world. We
intend to create an award for joiners that
recognises ‘Joinery as an Artform’; to support
this cause, I welcome submissions of joinery
projects that readers might be especially
proud of and which we may use in bringing this
project to life - with the clear goal of seeking
out and promoting excellence amongst this
most skilled group of people.
MIGHTON PRODUCTS:
DRIVEN BY PASSION
Mighton Products manufactures and
distributes products specially designed for
timber sash and casement windows, often
known as box frame windows in England and
Wales or sash and case windows in Scotland
and Northern Ireland. Mighton is the UK’s
oldest established sash window hardware
specialist.
Established in 1983 as a supplier of
nylon sash pulleys to the joinery window
industry, today Mighton Products offers a
comprehensive range of more than 2000 high
quality sash, casement and door products.
Mighton is founded on Mike Derham’s
passion for timber box sash windows and
all things produced in wood; in fact his drive
for high quality in the products for which
he supplies hardware and components is
obsessive and includes a keen interest in the
history of the box sash window.
A large proportion of the company’s sales are
derived from the USA supplying many of the
country’s large window and door manufacturers,
some of which have turnovers in billions
of dollars. One of Mighton’s key products
distributed there is the Angel Ventlock™, a
device that is designed to prevent children falling
through open windows. To produce this product
the company worked with the American
Standard Test Method (ASTM) Sub-Committee
to develop new standards of safety, work that
ultimately resulted in the introduction of child
window fall prevention standards ASTM F2090-
2008 and 2010. Mike remains passionate about
child fall prevention and is critical of how slowly
the wheels of bureaucracy turn in the UK
compared to the US, where officials are more
pragmatic in the way they face and implement
effective legislation to deal with such issues.
Thus, insists Mike, saving young lives along the
way.
Mike is also committed to the promotion
of and support for craftsmen-produced high
quality timber sliding sash or box sash windows,
produced today pretty much as they originated
in the 17th century, with roots back to Sir
Christopher Wren. In around 1669 London-
based master joiner Thomas Kinward was
working in the Royal apartments at Whitehall
Palace when his employer, no less than Sir
Christopher Wren, asked him to put ‘a line and
pulley to the window in ye Queen’s Stoole room’.
It was the earliest recorded specification of a
fully developed sash window. Whether Kinward
thought up the characteristic counter-balancing
feature or whether it was Wren himself is
undecided but by the time Anne was crowned
in 1702, the traditional but inconvenient English
casement window with leaded lights had all
but been abandoned in favour of the sash that
became the hallmark of Georgian architecture.
Mike and his colleagues see windows as
intrinsic to the personality of a building, as
important to the workman’s terrace or the
shopkeeper’s villa as to the cleric’s manse and
the gentry’s hall. Mike believes, however, that
the doors and windows that created this most
distinctive characteristic of so many British
buildings are threatened - believing, together with
many conservationists, that the legacy developed
by the proportions, detailing, and materials
of windows and doors is being lost by the
insensitive replacement with modern designs.
He does believes though that many home
improvement specialists are attracted by the
margins possible through installing high quality
timber sash frames as well as the marketing
lead that entering this sector provides into
upmarket homeowners that are dedicated
to the authentic preservation of their period
homes. “I believe that the message is getting
out there,” says Mike. “Sales of timber sash
windows are growing and some of this is down
to home improvement firms in addition to
greater demand through specialist joiners and
carpenters.”
www.mightonproducts.com
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