Jim Cooper spent his whole working life with Minty, the famous Oxford furniture manufacturer.

He joined at 14 and retired a year before his death in 1965, aged 63.

He was a highly-skilled furniture maker - and was known as the saw doctor' for his ability to mend the firm's large range of saws.

Marquees were another of the firm's specialities and he helped put them up for college balls.

His daughter, Jill Phipps, was prompted to write in after seeing the picture of Minty employees at a staff dance in the late 1940s or early 1950s (Memory Lane, September 11).

She, her father and mother, Mabel, were among the group.

Mrs Phipps, who lives in Swindon, recalls how her father would cycle, bus or occasionally walk from their home at Littlemore to the Minty factory in Cherwell Street, St Clement's.

One day, when he left his lunch at home, she and her mother, whose maiden name was Aishfield, caught the bus to deliver it to the factory.

"We arrived in St Clement's to find fire hoses all over the road.

"There had been a fire at the factory.

"Dad had been trying to clear the wood out of the store and was covered in ash."

Mr Cooper, who was the firm's longest-serving worker when he retired, had another skill.

The man he worked with in the early days was deaf and dumb, so he learned sign language.

Mrs Phipps remembers seeing him in Cowley Road one day doing strange things with his hands - then realised that he was talking' to a man on the opposite pavement.

As we recalled, the firm was founded in Oxford by Mr NEE Minty, who opened a shop at 45 High Street in 1880.

He made furniture in a workshop at the back.

Production was later switched to larger premises in Cherwell Street, and shops were opened in London and Manchester.

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

It closed after a takeover by rival Cornwell Parker in the early 1990s.