ARCHIBALD KNOX - Key Persons
Charles Robert Ashbee is widely accepted as one of the mainstays of the English Arts & Crafts movement. His influence cannot be understated, drawing much of his philosophy and inspiration from John Ruskin and William Morris. As Charles Rennie Mackintosh was to Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Robert Ashbee is to Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Growing up in the latter half of the 19th century, Ashbee was part of a group of wealthy and influential artists who were invested in ensuring that the art of handmade arts and crafts would not be replaced by factory-made products that were flooding the market. Ashbee and his contemporaries worried that delicate, handmade handicrafts were at risk of dying out, replaced instead by mass, machine-produced products. And so, at the turn of the 20th century, Charles Robert Ashbee and his Guild of Handicraft were at the vanguard of English handmade metalwork and jewellery. More so than any other British designer or manufacturer, he successfully combined the ideological and the aesthetic ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Ashbee was born in1863, Isleworth, Middlesex, England After education at Wellington College and King's College, Cambridge, and while actively involved in the social work of Toynbee Hall, Ashbee was articled to the architect G.F. Bodley. In 1887 Ashbee founded the School of Handicraft and in 1904 the School of Arts and Crafts, which continued its work until the outbreak of World War I.
It was when Ashbee founded the Guild of Handicraft in 1888, that the most notable works of decorative art, often to his designs, particularly in silver hollowware, jewellery, and furniture, were produced. The Guild expanded rapidly and in 1891 relocated to Mile End, in Essex House, a grand, Georgian mansion.
Sadly, the Guild, which relied on funding from the now defunct London City Council, had to close once the funding stopped. But Ashbee found a workaround, and made his dream of creating a ‘workers commune' a reality. He relocated his organisation, along with its 100-strong students of mostly middle and working-class east London men, to the rural idylls of Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds. There, the Guild thrived thanks to the patronage of largely affluent locals until it closed in 1907, the model co-operative not being sustainable in its present form.
In his long and varied career Christopher Dresser was an ornamentalist, a lecturer in botany, and a designer of silver, ceramics, glass, furniture, and textile patterns. Like his contemporary William Morris (1834-1896), he believed that it took an artist, not just a craftsman, to create good design. However, unlike Morris, who shunned industrial production, Dresser embraced it.
He is considered one of the most important independent industrial designers in history, dubbed ‘The father of industrial design'. In his time he was a pivotal figure in the Aesthetic Movement and a major contributor to the allied Anglo-Japanese style.
Christopher Dresser was born in Glasgow, Scotland, of a Yorkshire family. At age 13, he began attending the Government School of Design, Somerset House, London. From this early date his design work widened to include carpets, ceramics, furniture, glass, graphics, metalwork, including silver and electroplate, and textiles printed and woven. He claimed to have designed "as much as any man" at the International Exhibition London 1862.
In 1859, he received a Philosophy doctorate in absentia from the prestigious University of Jena, Germany.
He wrote several books on design and ornament, including The Art of Decorative Design (1862), The Development of Ornamental Art in the International Exhibition (1862), and Principles of Design (1873), which was addressed in the preface to "working men". In 1899 The Studio magazine found it was possible to quote this book "page after page and not find a line, scarcely a word, which would not be endorsed by the most critical member of the Arts and Crafts Association today." In effect Dresser set the agenda adopted by the Arts and Crafts movement at a later date.
In 1873 he was requested by the American Government to write a report on the design of household goods.
En route for Japan in 1876 he delivered a series of three lectures in the Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Art and supervised the manufacture of wallpapers to his design for Wilson Fennimore. He was commissioned by Messrs Tiffany of New York to form a collection, whilst in Japan, of 3,000 art objects both old and new that should illustrate the manufactures of that country.
In 1876, the British Government appointed Dresser as an emissary to Japan and sent him to visit Japan after he became associated with Japanese art in 1862, and made a number of Japanese business associates such as Kiritsu Kosho Kaisha, in the years following. In four months in 1876 - 1877 Dresser travelled about 2000 miles in Japan, recording his impressions in Japan, its Architecture, Art and Art-Manufactures. He represented the South Kensington Museum whilst in Japan, and was received at court by the Emperor, who ordered Dresser to be treated as a guest of the nation - all doors were open to him. He was requested by the Japanese Government to write a report on 'Trade with Europe'. His pioneering study of Japanese art is evident in much of his work which is considered typical of the Anglo-Japanese style.
As well as a designer Dresser also imported and retailed. From 1879 to 1882 Dresser was in partnership with Charles Holme (1848-1923) as Dresser & Holme, wholesale importers of Oriental goods, with a warehouse at 7 Farringdon Road, London.[5]
Between 1879 and 1882, as Art Superintendent at the Linthorpe Art Pottery in Linthorpe in Middlesbrough he designed over 1,000 pots. If his ceramic work from the 1860s onwards (for firms such as Mintons, Wedgwood, Royal Worcester, Watcombe, Linthorpe, Old Hall at Hanley and Ault) is considered, he must be amongst the most influential ceramic designers of any period.
During the same period he was designing some of his best known metalwork. Silver plated functional items such as tea-pots, toastracks, and spoon warmers for the likes of Hukin & Heath, James Dixon & Sons, and Elkington.
Some of these Dresser metalwork designs are still in production, such as his oil and vinegar sets and toast rack designs, now manufactured by Alessi. Alberto Alessi goes so far as to say Dresser 'knew the techniques of metal production better than any designer who has come to Alessi'.
"I had grown sick of the way in which the methods of manufacture adopted to meet the public demand were killing the spirit of craftsmanship in metals…I do the designs myself, and never produce a duplicate. No die, or machinery, are employed, and so the artist's fancy is at work upon the subject". Gilbert Marks interviewed in Black & White magazine, London, May 1896
Born in Croydon, London. He was the son of John G. Marks (born c.1841 in London), a manager working for a sherry shipper. His uncles included the painters Henry Marks (1829-1898) and Frederick Walker (1840-1875).
On leaving school in 1878 Marks was employed as a clerk by a firm of silversmiths [believed to have been Holland, Aldwinckle & Slater of Jewin Crescent, City of London], for whom he worked until c.1885 when he joined Masurel & Fils, wool brokers. During these years he spent his spare time developing his skills as an art metalworker.
In 1895 the first solo exhibition of his work was held at the showrooms of Messrs Johnson, Walker & Tolhurst, 80 Aldersgate Street, London in 1895. It consisted of salvers, rose-water dishes, goblets, and flower vessels in repoussé. A review of the exhibition appeared 'The Studio' in September 1895 pp. 219-220 which said that: "we were, on the whole, most pleased with the manner in which the metal had been treated by the artist. The surfaces of the objects were not over-ornamented, pleasant plain spaces being left which served to accentuate the beauty of the designs. The objects were free from meretricious machine turning and polishing, and were left in the natural dull white colour in which silver looks at its best. The marks of the tools employed in chasing or hammering out the design were not obliterated, and the whole of the exhibits had that pleasant sense of 'handwork' which is entirely missing in the majority of wrongly called artistic work produced under the direction of 'the trade.' We shall await with interest the further development of Mr. G. L. Marks' work."
Johnson, Walker & Tolhurst subsequently held a series of exhibitions of Marks' work until 1901. Between 1897 and 1903. he also exhibited at the Royal Academy in London; the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool; Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts; and Leeds City Art Gallery. There are a number of examples of his works in public collections, including a cup in the Victoria and Albert Museum (displayed in the silver galleries in 2013); and a silver, embossed and chased dish in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Marks suffered from ill health for a number of years and died in 1905.
Marks' works are in a number of significant collections, including those of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, the Worshipful Company of Pewterers, the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa