COURT BARN - Key Persons
C. R. Ashbee was one of only two British designers invited to exhibit at the Vienna Secession.
The prestigious exhibition was devoted to showing the foremost contemporary European decorative arts. There were 53 items of furniture, jewellery and metalwork from Ashbee's Guild of Handicraft, making it the second largest exhibitor. A writing cabinet had pride of place. It was bought by a Viennese family and is now at The Wilson, Cheltenham. Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Glasgow designer, was the only other British exhibitor.
David Hart started an apprenticeship in silverwork.
He worked alongside his father Henry and grandfather George on the first floor of the Silk Mill. The workshop has hardly changed since it was first taken over by the Guild silversmiths in 1902. David Hart has been the senior silversmith in the workshop since his father's death in 1990 and has seen a huge growth of interest in the craft and its history in Chipping Campden.
David Hart became a Freeman of the Goldsmiths' Company.
In the same year Derek Elliott joined Harts Silversmiths as an apprentice. He was followed a few years later by William Hart, David's son, and then by William's cousin Julian. They make pieces for churches, institutions and individuals based on both Guild of Handicraft and their own designs.
Griggs, an illustrator and printmaker, was working on the Cotswold volume of Macmillan's Highways and Byways series when he came to Chipping Campden in 1904. He fell in love with the town and took a lease on Dover's House in the High Street. Woodroffe, a stained-glass artist, moved from London to Chipping Campden where his sister and brother-in-law, the composer Joseph Moorat, were already living. Ashbee enlarged and adapted the Thatched Cottage at Westington for him. Woodroffe was Catholic and worked particularly for Catholic churches including St Catharine's in Chipping Campden.
Gordon Russell joined the family business in Broadway, after demobilization.
He was 27-year-old and before the First World War he had been restoring furniture and making new pieces for the Lygon Arms, owned and run by his father. After the war the business was renamed Russell & Sons and Gordon began designing furniture and metalwork. The first exhibition of his designs in Cheltenham in 1923 was seen by Major A. A. Longden of the Department of Overseas Trade who then invited him to exhibit later that year at the V&A in London. This was the start of a successful career.
Under Gordon Russell's direction the firm opened a London showroom in Wigmore Street. His younger brother Dick, who had trained at the Architectural Association in London, took over as head of the drawing office in Broadway. A few years later in 1935 the showrooms moved a few doors down to larger premises. A very contemporary shopfront designed by Geoffrey Jellico with blue neon fascia lettering and room set displays established the firm at the forefront of modern design.
Woodroffe employed about eight craftsmen at Chipping Campden. He won an important competition in 1908 to design fifteen large windows for the new Lady Chapel of St Patrick's (Catholic) Cathedral in New York, USA. The completion of the commission was halted by the First World War and Woodroffe's illness and finally restarted in 1926. He also undertook graphic work including an emblem for Gordon Russell Ltd, illustrations for the Essex House Press and other book designs.