Solomon Afia was born in Constantinople in 1884 and immigrated to England in 1905. In 1906, he married Sara, a native of Salonica born in 1886. They welcomed a daughter named Clara around 1908. The 1911 census lists as a “visitor” in their home a 65-year-old widow also named Clara Afia. Born in Constantinople, she was likely Solomon’s mother (according to Ottoman Sephardi custom, first-born daughters are named after the paternal grandmother). Another child, Hyman V., followed in 1915, and in 1919, the family welcomed a daughter named Jinnie. By 1939, Hyman V. had become a commercial artist and Jinne a student teacher.
Solomon worked as a carpet repairer until 1908, earning a weekly wage of £5. In 1908, having saved £100, he opened up a carpet repair and dealership on Cutler Street, Houndsditch. In 1911, he relocated to New Street, Bishopgate. In 1910, he entered into a business partnership with Aaron Cohen Benardout, dealing in carpets and rugs at 5 New Street, Bishopsgate E.C. ln 1912, he and Benardout transferred the business to 4 & 6 Arcade, South Kensington Station, inviting J. Pontremoli and M. Eskinazi, for a total of four partners, who together traded as the Anglo Persian Carpet Co. In 1913, they dissolved the partnership by mutual consent (Benardout continued to trade under the same name).[1] In 1914, Afia moved his business premises to Cavendish Court, Bishopsgate, where he remained until 1925. For much of that year, he also ran a shop in Duke Street, Aldersgate, with the intention of moving his entire concern to that new address. However, Afia lost about £200 and by the end of the year had to give up the Cavendish Court shop. He then rented a basement at 16/17 Devonshire Square, Bishopsgate. But the business flailed due to its inauspicious location.
By this time, Afia was in serious financial dire straits. In 1926, his wife deposited with him the deeds of the leasehold property belonging to her at Shepherd’s Bush, allowing Afia to obtain accommodation from his bankers. In 1929, he borrowed more money from his wife. He closed his shop at Devonshire Square and, as surety for his wife’s loans to him, transferred to his wife his stock, which had an estimated value of £300. From January 1928 to the following January, he also operated a shop in Pennards Road, Shepherd’s Bush. Beginning in January 1928, he began to trade at Churchfield Road, Acton, where he occupied a room on the first floor, which he used as a workroom. His wife and daughters operated a fancy goods business in the shop below.[2]
Afia’s status as an enemy alien must have exacerbated his hardships. An article about his bankruptcy in 1930, with brief biographical details, appeared in a London newspaper carrying the title “A Turk’s Affairs.”[3] Other newspapers ran similar articles, clearly identifying Afia as “a Turkish subject.”[4] Subsequent articles published at the end of that year, announcing Afia’s deliverance from bankruptcy through a judge-approved composition scheme, noticeably omitted references to his “Turkish” nationality.[5]
Afia next enters the historical record through the trial of Isaac Behar, a Constantinopolitan-born Oriental carpet dealer convicted of fraud and uttering in 1936. A Detective Lieutenant with the Glasgow Police testified during the trial that in 1936 he had obtained a warrant to search the homes of Behar and his accomplices and gathered information that enabled him to trace some of the items to be examined by the court. One of the textiles, a needlework bedspread, came from “S. Affia [sic],” identified as an Oriental rug and tapestry dealer in London.[6] Although Afia was not implicated in the crime, the trial must have unsettled him and the other carpetmen called to testify.
By the 1950s, Afia had changed his firm’s name to Afia Ltd. and was operating at 136 Kensington, High Street, London, where he specialized in needleloom carpeting. Afia died at the age of 85 in 1967, but his establishment lived on. In the 1970s, the company sold wool and nylon carpets, but kept the Oriental carpet tradition alive by promoting weaving and hand-knotting demonstrations.[7] By 1980, a likely related company called M. & S. Afia, Carpet Specialists, had opened at 12 Hanover Street, Stranraer, Wigtownshire. This company often advertised new wool Berber carpets in the local papers. That same year, Afia Carpets was still operating its Baker Street shop and had sold a made-to-order seamless oversized carpet for around £24,000.[8] By 1993, Afia Carpets had been acquired by Europe’s largest wallpaper group, Walker Greenbank.[9]
[1] TNAUK, HO 144/13286, naturalization file of Aaron Cohen Benardout.
[2] No author, “A Turk’s Affairs: Carpet Dealer’s Creditors,” Acton Gazette and West London Post (September 12, 1930): 7. This article indicates that Afia moved to New Street in 1911. Benardout’s naturalization application gives the year as 1910.
[3] No author, “A Turk’s Affairs.”
[4] No author or title, Acton Gazette and West London Post (October 31, 1930): 6.
[5] No author, “Carpet Dealer’s Affairs: Composition Sanctioned,” The Middlesex County Times (November 22, 1930): 3. The composition required Afia to pay 20 shillings to the pound.
[6] National Records of Scotland, JC36-112, 598.
[7] No author, “Bits and Pieces,” Evening News (February 25, 1977): p.7.
[8] No author, “Don’t spill that beer,” Marlebone Mercury (December 26, 1980): 5.
[9] No author, “Optimistic note from wallpaper group,” Aberdeen Press and Journal (April 13, 1994): 13.