Nineteenth-century English Gothic revival decorative arts in a private collection

Magazine Antiques, June, 1995 by Martin Levy

In spirit and scope, the collection that is the subject of this article is very much in the Handley-Read tradition, reflecting the personality of the collector responsible for its creation. Much of the muscular Gothic revival furniture, for example, has the strength one would associate with a former rugby Blue. The collector's appreciation of construction and detail is indicative of someone with an understanding of architecture.(2) Brought up in a family where collecting, rather than furnishing, was a way of life, the collector remembers his forebears as "mini Burrells."(3)

While still at Oxford University he began collecting the etchings of the Italian architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), particularly those from the melancholic Carceri d'invenzione series first published around 1745. Other early purchases were old rummers (which are still put to good use). A bit later he came to admire Emile Galle (1846-1904) of Nancy, France, whom he regards as one of the greatest artists in glass. Today glass remains a significant part of his collection, notably with an imposing group of Clutha vases designed by Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) of London and made by James Couper and Sons (1850 or 1851-1911) of Glasgow, Scotland. Also well represented is the turn-of-the-century glass made by James Powell and Sons, Whitefriars Glass Works (1834-1980) in London.

When the collector moved to London in the early 1960's he found that a half-decent Victorian chair cost considerably less than a modern one, so, with no need for further justification, he began to buy old furniture. His first serious interest was French art nouveau, from which a small but spectacular group of ironwork by the French architect and designer Hector Guimard remains (see Pl. IV).(4) Gradually the collection evolved to focus on decorative arts by British designers, craftsmen, and manufacturers active between roughly 1830 and 1910. Within that period, the Gothic revival is particularly well represented.

The largest contributor to the furniture collection is Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, who was arguably the greatest and most influential architect and designer of the nineteenth century.(5) The earliest Pugin piece in the collection is the library table shown in Plate II, which is closer to the Gothic revival furniture he designed for Windsor Castle in the 1820's(6) than to the simpler and more structural designs that he had developed by the late 1830's. The design of the table base conforms exactly to that of the "Octagon table" published as Plate 13 in Pugin's Gothic Furniture in the style of the 15th [Cent.sup.y] designed and etched by AWN Pugin (London, 1835).(7) However, the circular top covered with embossed leather, the individually designed heads under the edge, the delicacy of the carved tracery, and the use of rosewood (unusual at the time for so distinctly Gothic a piece) make it unlikely that the table was modeled on a published design. A date of about 1834 can be proposed for the table, which could conceivably have been ordered by the antiques dealer Edward Hull of Wardour Street, London. In 1834 Hull received a set of furniture designs from Pugin,(8) and he is thought to have been a subscriber to Pugin's Gothic Furniture.(9) Surprisingly, very few pieces of furniture based on plates in that book are known to have been made.(10)

Pugin's most famous commission was for the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster in London, the seat of Parliament, which he worked on with the architect Sir Charles Barry (1795-1860) from 1835 until his death in 1852. The collection being discussed here has several side chairs in the so-called House of Lords pattern (see Pl. II)(11) and two chests of drawers formerly in the Pahee.(12) Of particular note are two side chairs in the so-called Prince's Chamber pattern (see Pl. III), for which a tracing of Pugin's design survives.(13) Sixteen of these chairs were supplied in 1847 by John Webb of New Bond Street in London(14) and were placed in the Prince's Chamber outside the main chamber of the House of Lords, at the throne end.(15)

Among Pugin's less well-known commissions is Oswaldcroft in Liverpool, which he designed and built between 1844 and 1847 for Henry Sharples. Among the furniture supplied for the house by J. G. Grace and Son of Wigmore Street in London(16) is the carved oak cabinet shown in Plate VIII.(17) The design clearly pleased Pugin for he adapted it from a similar, but more elaborate, cabinet he had made several years earlier for the dining room at the Grange, his house in Ramsgate, Kent.(18)

While Pugin's polemical publications such as The True Principles of pointed or Christian Architecture (London, 1841) inspired many of the architect-designers who were his successors, the influence of George Edmund Street was more direct. It was in his office that the rising stars of the next generation met - among them William Morris (1834-1896), Philip Webb (1831-1915), and Richard Norman Shaw (1831-1912). Street's own great legacy was the building for the Law Courts (also known as the Royal Courts of Justice) in London. Begun in 1868, the project occupied him until his death in 1881. When, in 1879, the need for furniture for the Law Courts became pressing, Street made the designs,(19) for like many of his predecessors and successors, he considered the design of furniture and interior firings for a building an essential part of the architect's role. The first contract for executing Street's furniture designs was won by Collinson and Lock (1870-1897) of London.(20) The second, approved in 1882 after Street's death, went largely to the London branch of the firm of Gillow. The oak side chair in Plate V is one of several different models now in this collection that were formerly in the Law Courts. The Gillow sketch for this unusual klismos-inspired chair is dated October 13, 1882, and like the twenty-one other sketches for this commission, it is clearly based on designs by Street.(21) The distinctive molding of the broad top rail is a variant of a feature that is found on several of Street's simple but powerful chairs.(22) Frances Collard pointed out to me that when placed side by side (as seen in early photographs of the courtrooms) the curved members flanking the vertical backs on these chairs created the effect of a Gothic arch.