Showing posts with label Dr Christopher Dresser. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dr Christopher Dresser. Show all posts

Monday 15 May 2017

E.W Godwin. The Forgotten Giant of Design.

Edward William Godwin (1833-1886) Architect, designer, interior decorator, theatrical producer, antiquary, writer, reformer and critic. That’s a bit of a list
Today he has been relatively forgotten. 
But he remains an important figure in nineteenth century modernism.
“One of the most artistic spirits of this century” said Oscar Wilde describing Edward William Godwin. 
Wilde employed Godwin to design the interior of his house.

Godwin exhibited furniture in some of the great international exhibitions of the nineteenth century including Vienna in 1873, Philadelphia 1876 and Paris 1878 after which he received commissions as far a field as Connecticut and Vienna.


He worked for some of the leading furniture manufacturers. Collin son and Lock, William Watt and Gillows amongst others.
Some of his completed work are now thought of as, beacons of design.
The Anglo-Japanese sideboard of 1867 was far ahead of its day.

The spindle legged coffee table that he designed for William Watt was one of the most copied designs in the 1870's and 1880's.

I first came across Godwin's work in The Sudley Art Gallery. (Before the current director ruined it). His table almost looked strange..... Too many legs but that was the uniqueness of the piece. This table made by William Watt and illustrated in Watt's Art Furniture could be bought in Walnut for £7.7s. 0d or in ebonized wood for the higher price of £7.15s.0d. Brass shoes for added stability for an extra £1.10s.0d.



Art Furniture and Designs by E.W Godwin, F.S.A and Others, with Hints and Suggestions on Domestic Furniture and Decorations was published in 1887 and reprinted 1878. Allowing the public to ponder over his designs and influence on modern taste.





He designed wallpapers and floor coverings and fabrics often coming up with new ideas how to hang curtains and decorate walls.
He designed ceramics for W. Brownfield and Sons, Cobridge and tiles for Minton and Hollins.

He played a leading role in aesthetic taste in Britain pioneering the use of plain distempered walls with plain wood floors covered simply by Indian matting or perhaps an Oriental carpet.
He wrote some 450 articles for architectural and building journals along with other publications that saw his influence reign over a country ready for changing styles.

He did not rely on one style but combined historic styles such as Jacobean and Greek with the new taste for the East.
He encouraged others to do the same. 
He was eclectic in his choice of influence.
A.W.N Pugin in the 1840's had exclusively designed in Gothic.
Godwin used amongst others classical motifs. 
Attempting to fuse historicism with modernity at a time Britain saw itself as the Empire nation that imported a vocabulary on design that it felt, with a brash arrogance, could do better. 
The bringing together of the world into a British style.



Britain’s internationalism was also part of its superiority complex and the middle classes were rich enough to be able to aspire to the new found evocation of their need to be ahead of the rest and furnish their homes with all sorts of new exotic designs with inspiration from the world.
After the first Japanese delegation arrived in Britain in 1862 and Japanese goods were shown at the international exhibition Japanese creativity became the influence of a new dawn on British design.
Designers such as Godwin were thought of as innovators rather than cross-references of eastern art.
His modular furniture designs was far ahead of the mid 20th century happening. The coming together of the need for built in furniture and hygiene combined with simplicity.
Most people would not put the era of the 1860's and minimalism together.

He was the architect of Herbert McNeil's Whistlers house in Tite Street that he named The Whitehouse.
A paired down style at a time when ornamentation was king.
Though other styles came into play, Japan was his main inspiration which is hardly surprising whith the influx of artefacts from Japan that came to the attention of the west when the Japanese opened up their trade links, after a little bit of gunboat diplomacy.
The fashion for ebonised furniture and dark weighty heavy pieces saw him move into a simple style of designing that now seems way ahead of its time.
Minimalism with maximum effect.
This was a time of aesthetic movement, a new romantic of the 1870's where people could, as Oscar Wilde would, wander round town in velveteen, reciting poetry, smelling gardenias.
Where new movements such as the Pre-Raphealites would declare.... the end of art is the new beginning......




A modest provincial upbringing in Bristol. His father was a leather dresser who died young, but before he died he had Edward apprenticed to a sober architect by the name of William Armstrong.
William knew his calling was London and eventually his aspirations took him there.
His attentive mind saw him involved, or interested in all aspects of design.
He was a Theatre critic for a while. 
One thespian that did not like his review turned up at his house. Where Godwin was dressed as Henry V in fine hose and was subsequently chased with a horsewhip by the disgruntled actor.
He was influenced by the Italian Gothic revival led and held in such high regard by John Ruskin, who championed it.

Being an architect Godwin said, “You were the mother of all arts.” For that reason he wanted to design everything right down to the knives and forks that came out only for dinner.
Beauty above truth........... The aesthetic movements clarion call was a vocation meant to run through all aspects of ones life.
He belonged to a club without membership. This entertainment for the masses was portrayed in print in the publications of their day, for all to see.

He kept a journal and would write about pretty chambermaids at every inn he stayed while out studying medieval architecture in Cornwall.
He married 1850 to his first wife who was the daughter of an independent minister.
They enjoyed many interesting visits to historic buildings together.
He was living in Bristol when he went to the International Exhibition of 1862, the follow on of the great Exhibition. There he discovered the art of Japan and went on to decorate his house in the new taste with Japanese prints on the wall.

Ellen Terry was 14 when she visited Godwin then still living with his first wife.
He designed a dress for her. Later on she described how impressed she was with the house he had designed, and with him.
She at 16 married G.F.Watts but she became somewhat unhappy with a man 30 years older than her and she always had a fondness for Godwin, and he stole her, she eloped with him.
She was famous, a serious actress in the 1860's. The scandal ensued. They had two children out of wedlock.
 He was a philanderer and while living in Hertfordshire he would visit ladies in London. 
He was obstinate in his ideals and did not want to listen to his clients more often than not he would do things his way. The pair had a bit of a tough time financially but went to London to straighten out finances where his head was turned again. They split and it was not long before he met Beatrice an architectural student who he taught.

He and Whistler were forever involved this was a period of excitement and change. The 20th century was just around the corner.
His students were thankful for the time he spent with them helping them. 
But he was also known as a selfish person greedy to do lots of things.
A biography in the Spectator Review “The conscious stone” by Dudley Harberin around 1914 said. 

“Few people will be familiar with the name of Edward Godwin this proud and disappointed man was the victim of providence's most malevolent tease for he was endowed with a immeasurable fertility of mind and a contrasting lack of creative ability. But the plain truth is his artistic output was exiguous and unimportant and Godwin was a man of eccentric and violent prejudices that he never hesitated to express in the most uncompromising and dogmatic terms. He was moreover almost always in the right. Such people are of course disagreeable to live and work with, and his relations with his wives, colleagues and clients show him to be a little bit of a cad, and dare we say it crook.”

He was not a man of that time. 
He was a man of Gothic time of Victorian sturdy ornamentation. But the second half of the 20th century saw us looking back to the inspiration for modernism as well as modernism itself. We now know more about the man then we did then.
One of his complimentries said he was “ an architect who had no compeer in England and a designer on consummate skill”.
The later obituaries say that he was a man unfulfilled who didn’t achieve his full potential.
The Whistler Whitehouse and the Wilde Interior were great works indeed. 
They captured the spirit of an age. The vivid colours of the interiors and the white furniture, which now seems lost in the scourge time, were ahead of its day.
Did he inspire the Mackintosh Glasgow interiors?
He won many architectural competitions showing artistic vision.
He had a yearning for the middle ages and was obsessed with accuracy in costume design.
Truth before beauty was the benchmark for his historical costumes for the theatre. This was a reversal of the motto of the aesthetes. He also produced plays.
Along with Lady Archibald Campbell the great Grey Lady. The great aesthetic muse of the day. They decided to put on Shakespeare in Coombe Forest........... As You Like It.
The play was performed as if they were really living in the woods with forest men carrying deer over their shoulders. Godwin dressed as a monk in one play.
He had an ambition and wanted to be a Theatre producer and built a studio flat in Tite Street where he could entertain his ambition.

Godwin was often called The Wicked Earl.

He married Beatrice 1876 but he never built much after.
He was buried in 1886 in an unmarked grave in his early fifties after a kidney operation that went wrong.
His wooden casket was carried on a farm cart and it was said that Beatrice, Whistler and Lady Campbell ate a sandwich on top of the coffin.
An account said the widow was in a white fur lined coat and wild gypsy hair. The second in a yellow Ulster with turquoise tam-o-shanter and a third in a French grey sailor blouse and hat. Rustics shouldered the coffin.
Lady Archibald Campbell said that at this precise moment she saw the first flirtation between Whistler and Beatrice. They soon became husband and wife.
Godwin and Beatrice's son Teddy designed the angels around Whistlers grave.

For a long time he was forgotten.

Roger Fry wrote about Godwin’s style as “a horror genuine modern style as yet which has no name, a period of black polished furniture with spidery lines”.
Nicholas Pevsner’s first edition of Pioneers of the Modern Movement from William Morris to Walter Gropius had no mention of Godwin at all.
Though Maurice Adams described him as a genius, but considered his career a failure.
C.F.A Voysey admitted his work owed much to earlier architect-designers such as William Burgess, E.W Godwin A. H MacMurdo, Bodley and others.
1945 saw Dudley Harbron write a scholarly essay on Godwin for Architectural Review. 
He highlighted this five-page article with line drawings.
 Three years later Pevsner praised Godwin's wallpaper designs.
Harbron in 1949 published a small biography with many inaccuracies but the work saw a turning point in the understanding of the forgotten man. 
Letters between Oscar Wilde and Godwin were found and in 1952 the Victoria and Albert Museum highlighted Godwin’s influences in the first museum-based exhibition of his work.
The 1950's and 60's saw a steady appreciation of his place in the 19th century. 
In 1960 the third edition of Pevsners Modern Pioneers of Design sealed his placement on the steps of design.
The 1970's saw numerous exhibitions including one at the Royal academy named Victorian Decorative Art that showed the collection of Charles Handley-Read that included four pieces of Godwin Furniture.
1976 saw Bristol Museums staged a show of Marcel Breuer and Godwin furniture two designers with links to Bristol this accompanied a bequest of fourteen pieces of furniture from Godwin's daughter Edith Craig.
In 1978 William Watts Art Furnishers catalogue was reprinted.
The 1980's saw more Godwin pieces appearing on the market and being snapped up by institutions.
The over decorated Victorian period has been thought of as a period of design as ebonised as much of the furniture that was created, back then.



 Much of Godwin’s output was retailed though Liberty & Co to an avant-garde clientele that included Godwin’s close friends.
Godwin himself complained in the foreword to the 1877 William Watt trade catalogue Art Furniture that an ebonised side table, designed in 1867 and made by Watt in the late 1860s and 70s, had been regularly copied without authorisation.
These look-alikes find a ready market today, at around £100-150, the fraction of the price of a William Watt made Godwin original.
There is also a distinction to made between the designs Godwin produced - both earlier in his career and for more conservative clients - which are grounded in traditional Victorian design and the more desirable stark geometric forms for which he is most admired.

 There were many plagiarised copies of his tables.



But along with Christopher Dresser there seems to my mind a thorough examination must be taken of the enduring modernism of this Great Victorian.  

Friday 8 April 2016

Archibald Knox-And The Liberty Style.

Archibald Knox has for some time been recognised as one of the countries most influential designers who worked predominantly for the company Liberty & Co.
The famous shop in Regent Street would become an international focus of art, design, and good taste. Its founder would shape art history through the wares that he sold.
Knox helped to create the Celtic revival.
In Italy Style Liberty is the term generally used to describe Art Nouveau, such was its reputation.
Though England would help shape the worlds art through the thought process best exemplified by John Ruskin and William Morris on the continent the inspirational work of Viollet-le-Duc would also help give birth to a movement that had more freedom.
The restraint that developed in Britain steered the public away from the designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, whose Glasgow School of Art was sneered at as out of date when completed. On the continent he helped inspire a generation of artists and designers such as Joseph Hoffman as head of The Wiemer Werkstatte.
In Europe the freedom to express forged a more liberated version of art Nouveau.
The term Art Nouveau, French for new art was the name of the shop opened by Samuel Bing that was a direct influence from the Liberty & Co store.
The Celtic style would remain popular for a generation and the man who was to do more to drive it forward would be Archibald Knox.
Knox was born 1864 Cronkbourne (Tromode) Isle of Man. His father was an engineer and he was expected to follow the family tradition. He felt isolated amidst the pressure to, like his brothers join the family firm. Robert Knox was concerned about his sons use of the pencil complaining “Why he doesn't even know how to hold a hammer”.
At an early age he lost the top of his index finger and was happy to sketch and draw.
He was surrounded with Ornament of a Celtic nature, he would be sure to be influenced by this.
Owen Jones Grammar of Ornament would be published in 1856 and would hold a section on Celtic ornament.
Principles of Ornament would be outlined by Christopher Dresser in 1876 in his volume Studies in Design.
He attended St Barnabas Elementary School and then Douglas Grammar School both in Douglas becoming a pupil teacher 1878-1883.
In 1887 he passed the examination in 'Design' with a first class result in 'Principles of Ornament and went on to achieve a Art Masters Certificate in 1889
In 1893 he published an article in 'The Builder' entitled 'Ancient Crosses in The Isle Of Man'. He was possibly working in the offices of the architect and designer M.H. Baillie Scott until 1896.
He left Isle of Man in 1897 to take up a teaching post at Redhill Surrey.
Knox contacted the firm of Liberty possibly through his association with Baillie Scott who had been designing fabrics for the company from as early as 1893.
He became design master at the art School Kingston-upon-Thames in 1899 the same year as the first Cymric patterns became available in the Liberty store.
In 1900 the same year as he purchased a cottage at Sulby on the Isle of Man the cheaper Tudric range was introduced in direct competition to the continental manufacturers. Knox submitted several of piece meal designs.
He would live close to Christopher Dresser who designed, indirectly for Liberty.
1903 sees Liberty taking part in the Arts and Crafts Exhibition with four items by Knox.
By 1904 he was submitting huge amounts of designs for Silver, Pewter, carpets, pottery, jewellery, textiles and possibly furniture to Liberty's. While still teaching at Kingston-upon-Thames. In 1904 he was appointed principle at Wimbledon.
In 1909 Liberty & Co sold several designs to their competitors James Connell.
South Kensington Examiners complain about Knox's style of teaching which he rejects and resigns.
One of the pupils pull out a bunch of designs in a waste-paper basket in Kingston Art School and save them. These are now in the V&A.
Denise and Winifred Tuckfield along with six other students leave in disgust at the acceptance of Knox resignation.
He returned to The Isle of Man in 1912 but on the 21st august that year left for Philadelphia from Liverpool on a schooner named Dominion. He failed to find suitable employment though he taught for a while in Pennsylvania School of Industrial arts. In a letter to Denise Tuckfield he states misgivings about the Renaissance architecture that made up the city. A style of architecture he did not like. 'Renaissance architecture is a scholars work-Gothic is work done by a man of sentiment and feeling'. He would say.
He had carried a letter of introduction from Arthur Lazenby Liberty which no doubt helped him secure work with Bromley and Co designing carpets.
He also carried with him Liberty catalogues and his work was recognised. Though in the letter to Ms Tuckfield he states that one firm called it the art of the drug store.
He moved to New York. In 1913 he returned to Isle of Man.
He taught at the Aliens Detention camp there and served as a censor during the war.
In 1917 Arthur Lazenby Liberty died. Knox designed his memorial stone at The Lee Church in Buckinghamshire.
1920 sees him teaching art at Douglas High school and he also travels to Italy to study frescoes.
He held a one man exhibition in Ottawa Canada of his paintings.
In 1933 he died suddenly and was buried at the age of 69 in Braddon Cemetery Isle of Man.

The Knox designs held in the V&A have long thought to be the rejected designs.
Knox designs have long held an attribution based on elements of design known to be by Knox's own hand.
There is a formula to the work of Knox he would take a rough sketch and rework it over and over again and eventually the Celtic interlacing would appear as if through a fog of smudges and marks. This a very interesting way to work it almost feels mystical. When the work was coming to life with smudges and all and parts of the paper rubbed out with grey lines all over the paper, a transfer was taken by tracing the design using a sharpened lead pencil.
Where semi precious stones were to be placed would often be highlighted with watercolour.
The designs would be annotated with shape size and details such as stones and enamels.
Numbers that were intended to relate to the grouping of several pieces in sequence maybe to be used as a unit such as a tray to be combined with a tea service.
Knox kept a stock book detailing which designs Liberty & Co actually purchased.
The majority of the designs held in the V&A collection were intended for the Cymric range of metalwork.
By 1900 the output was catching up with design and what had been happening on the continent with pewter was put into practice.
Lazenby Liberty had acquired the designs for several competition winners held by The Studio magazine. There was a rule that the purchase of the design could not be purchased for more than the prize money won.
At this stage the numbers are not up to 50 and the Tea Caddy design from the Studio by Tramp (David Veazey). The design for a tankard by ' Parnassus' Charlotte E. Elliot, 111 Chatham Street Liverpool has the number 049.

Rivet as much as you can;
Don't countersink the rivets;
Give them a firm head so they may have a firm grip;
complete them that they cannot hold dirt;
Give them desired form; they are sin clipped:
Flattened too obviously.
He would proclaim to his pupils.
With the pewter range there was no need for riveting in the moulded production and it seems that this is intended for silver work.
The discarded drawings were from 1911-12 when they were binned when he stormed out of his position at Kingston.
So it is by attribution that we put many designs as the work of Knox and Liberty was adamant that the name Liberty & Co would be the only attribution that would appear on the work.
Though the Cymric and Tudric pewter wares are widely known to be by Knox.
Most of the Liberty & Co archives were destroyed by enemy bombing during the war.
That said the Celtic revival that Archibald Knox helped to bring to the masses leaves him placed as one of the most influential designers of the Arts and Crafts period.

The students who walked out from Kingston now formed the 'Knox Guild of Craft and Design' and set up premises at 24 Market St Kingston. He supervised and attended several exhibitions and showed his rarely viewed watercolours.
They exhibited at the 1924 exhibition hall not only work but set up looms and other equipment.
Denise Wren (nee Tuckfield) continued with designs at Oxshott Pottery which is still run today by her daughter Rosemary. Her designs of 1913 show direct reference to the principles of design laid down by her mentor and do look familiar in style. She also designed alphabet that look as if it could have been made at the hand of Archibald Knox.
Liberty sold designs attributed to Knox that were manufactured at the Watts Pottery, Compton.
Most of his work was attributed to Liberty under the usual format.
He seems to have been an unassuming character who would not have minded preferring to be part of something much bigger.

He leaves us a legacy that helped to form the Celtic spirit and the history of its artistic presence in these isles that now too becomes a part of its recent history to inspire further generations in the not too distant future.

Thursday 3 April 2014

Dr Christopher Dresser-STUDIES IN DESIGN. Published by Cassell, Petter and Galpin.


I was very pleased this week to acquire this Folio entitled STUDIES IN DESIGN by Christopher Dresser which is printed to the highest standards.
Though the binding is in a distressed state the plates inside are mostly as they were when the left Cassell, Petter and Galpin print works.
Each plate is frameable. Though I will never break up a book.   
It has been reprinted but as an original of 1876 It appears to be quite rare.
Its all been said about how far ahead Dresser's designs were.
Though a lot of them are now more esoteric than commercial there is no doubting his place in the history of design, not just in this country but in the world.

If my memory serves me correctly and I am typing this as I think, he collected glass for Louis Comfort Tiffany on his travels round the globe. Where he collected designs, quite a lot of them in the Japanese taste  Not all designs are actually by him, but by his studio. This was a common practice in Victorian times, as an example in today's terms, we can say, Lord Foster cant do all the drawings for all his architectural projects.
Here in splendid colour we can see the vibrancy and attention to detail that was applied in a Victorian age of heavy brown furniture.  If I also remember rightly I was once told by a learned authority that his father was a tax inspector in Liverpool.

I thought you may like to share the beauty of some of the plates. 
And I thought I would like to share it.
Click on the link below to read the e-book on line.


https://archive.org/details/Studiesdesign00Dres