Cottier and Company, art furniture makers

Magazine Antiques, June, 2001 by Max Donnelly

The term "Art Furniture" was coined by the English designer and art critic Charles Locke Eastlake (1836-1906) in 1868 and came to signify the response of commercial furniture manufacturers to the reforms of mid-Victorian designers and critics. The firm of Cottier and Company, founded in London in 1869 by Daniel Cottier, offered clients art furniture as part of complete interior schemes that also included stained glass and textiles at a time when public demand for all things "artistic" and "aesthetic" was gathering pace. To capitalize on this trend Cottier and Company established branches in New York City and Sydney, Australia, in 1873. Whereas the name Cottier is still associated with innovative stained glass in these places, its furniture is less well known, despite the fact that when it was made it was equally admired. This is probably because hardly any interiors created by the firm have survived, and the furniture is seldom marked. Yet within these limits and in the context of documented stained glass and ceramics made by the firm, some furniture can be attributed to Cottier and Company.

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Daniel Cottier began his career as a stained-glass artist in his native Glasgow and had established himself as an independent designer in Edinburgh in 1864. (1) By that time he had already decorated furniture for a client in Aberdeen: John Forbes White (1831-1904), for whom he stenciled an ebonized dressing table. (2) As an independent designer Cottier with his assistants decorated furniture as one element of three interior and glazing schemes for Presbyterian churches in Glasgow. These were Townhead Parish Church (1865-1866) designed by John James Stevenson (1831-1908), Dowanhill United Presbyterian Church (1866-1867) designed by William Leiper (1839-1916), and Queen's Park United Presbyterian Church (1867-1869) designed by Alexander Thomson (1817-1875). The only survivor of these three churches is Dowanhill, which is now the Cottier Theatre. There the minister's pulpit seat and the collection plate stands were painted with a rich combination of boldly colored stylized foliage reminiscent of the furniture designed by the English architect William Burges (1827-1881).

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With the establishment of Cottier and Company in London, the firm advertised as "Art Furniture Makers, Glass and Tile Painters." (3) The influential designer Bruce James Talbert (1838-1881), whom Cottier probably knew from the Edinburgh office of the architect Stevenson, was briefly associated with the firm. Around 1870 Talbert designed an oak side cabinet for Coll-Earn (now Collearn) House in Auchterarder, Perthshire, a house designed by Leiper and glazed by Cottier for the industrialist Alexander Stuart Mackintosh (1821-1901). The sideboard, which remains in the house, is attributed to Talbert for its similarity to engravings in his Gotbic Form ... (4) and is the only known piece of furniture associated with Cottier and Company to have survived from a Scottish commission. The company also installed an extensive series of stained-glass windows in the hall and staircase of Leiper's Cairndhu House in Helensburgh, Dunbartonshire. The windows are similar in style to those designed by Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) for Morris and Company. Cairndhu House was built in 1872 and 1873 for John G. Ure (1820-1901), later the lord provost of Glasgow. The original furnishings have disappeared.

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Cottier enlisted the services of Matthijs Maris (1839-1917), a Dutch painter of rural scenes, who came to the company as a designer around 1872. Cottier also became acquainted with Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) through the branches of the Goupil Gallery first in The Hague and later in London. Among Cottier's assistants were the artists Norman McLeod Macdougall (1852-1939), Charles Gow (w. 1830-1891), and William J. Nelson (w. 1873-1883). The cousins Rhoda (1841-1882) and Agnes Garrett (1845-1935), nieces of Stevenson, briefly studied glass painting in Cottier's studio before establishing their own interior decorating business.

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Cottier and Company's New York City branch at 144 Fifth Avenue was managed by James Smith Inglis (1852-1907), a young Scottish artist. Cottier himself lived in the United States for a number of years, traveling frequently between New York and London. He visited Australia at least three times, although the Sydney branch was effectively run by his business partner John Lamb Lyon (1835-1916).

The furniture Cottier and Company produced in New York attracted considerable attention, aided by the publicity given it by the critic Clarence Cook (1828-1900), who wrote about a number of New York firms, including Herter Brothers and Kimbel and Cabus, in a series of articles published in Scribner's Monthly between 1875 and 1877. In 1878 the articles were issued as a book entitled The House Beautiful ... with a binding designed by Cottier. In the preface Cook made

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Grateful mention of Mr. Daniel Cottier to whom, as friend and artist, the author has been constantly indebted for advice and practical help, since he first began to write these pages. Without him and his House, represented here by Mr. James S. Inglis, the book would have wanted much that has helped it to win the favor of the public. (5)