Ernest Gimson: Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect

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Ernest's brother Sidney provides a vivid account of this meeting, in a 1932 account of the Leicester Secular Society, now in the Leicestershire Records Office and quoted at length in Comino (1980), p,13-15 Sidney's recollections can be read at http://leicestersecularsociety.org.uk/PHP_redirected/gimson.php#ernest Comino, Mary (1980). Gimson and the Barnsleys:'Wonderful furniture of a commonplace kind' . London: Evans Brothers Limited. ISBN 0237448955.

Lethaby, W. R.; Powell, Alfred H. and Griggs, F. L. Ernest Gimson, His Life & Work. Stratford-upon-Avon: Shakespeare Head Press. Ernest William Gimson ( / ˈ dʒ ɪ m s ən/; 21 December 1864 – 12 August 1919) was an English furniture designer and architect. Gimson was described by the art critic Nikolaus Pevsner as "the greatest of the English architect-designers". [1] Today his reputation is securely established as one of the most influential designers of the English Arts and Crafts movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was a tall, well-built man with a slight stoop, a large rather heavy face, except when he smiled, a brown moustache and wide-open contemplative eyes. His expression was that of a man entirely at peace with himself and all the world. His tweed suit hung loosely over a soft shirt and collar, with a silk tie threaded through a ring. Being summer he wore a panama hat instead of his usual cloth cap, but in all seasons he wore heavy hobnailed boots made for him by a cobbler in Chalford.’ What sort of person was he? The welcome Mr and Mrs Gimson gave on those winter evenings had the magical quality of their home. Ernest Gimson combined sympathy and humour with knowledge about everything. He was a kindly wizard, who could tell us all about plants and animals, stars and cathedrals, politics and history, art and books. Little snorts of appreciation and of fun were characteristic of him, as he told. We sat, listening and talking, by candles and log-fire light.’ Gimson and the Barnsley brothers moved to the rural region of the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire in 1893 "to live near to nature". They soon settled at Pinbury Park, near Sapperton, on the Cirencester estate, under the patronage of the Bathurst family. In 1900, he set up a small furniture workshop in Cirencester, moving to larger workshops at Daneway House, a small medieval manor house at Sapperton, where he stayed until his death in 1919. He strove to invigorate the village community and, encouraged by his success, planned to found a Utopian craft village. He concentrated on designing furniture, made by craftsmen, under his chief cabinet-maker, Peter van der Waals, whom he engaged in 1901.

He was a great walker all his life. Maggie Gimson remembered walking with him from Leicester to Sapperton in Gloucestershire in about 1900. It took them four or five days covering about 20 miles a day. The distance along the Fosse Way is about 75 miles. Lea Cottage was conceived during the late 1890s by Ernest Gimson the famous founder member of the Arts and Crafts Movement of that period and completed in 1898 for Mentor Gimson, Ernest's older half-brother. The Arts and Crafts Movement has emerged as the major force in the history of British design during the last 100 years and Lea Cottage was the first of three Gimson cottages built by Ernest for the family, largely summer retreats. It is fascinating to speculate whether Gimson’s uncompromising stance could have survived the upheavals of post-war society had he not died in August 1919. His views on standardised housing (‘Wrong, wrong’) reveal the growing gulf between his view of essential human needs and the practical requirements of the modern world. Nonetheless, his legacy continued through the incomparable craftsmanship of his furniture and the interest it aroused in European designers of the next generation, such as Josef Frank and Carl Malmsten. This book, similar in scope and importance to Sheila Kirk’s 2005 biography of Philip Webb, is an invaluable resource for those interested in Gimson’s life and work – and for understanding the impossibility of separating the two. This diverse range was possible because they had recruited a highly skilled and experienced young cabinet maker as foreman. Pieter van der Waals (aka Peter Waals) was a Dutchman who had worked in The Hague, Brussels, Berlin and Vienna and whom Gimson had encountered in London. He also took on other experienced men, including Harry Davoll, who had been with Waring & Gillow in Liverpool, and Percy Burchett. From the beginning, boys recruited locally were trained as apprentices.

Norman Jewson, who first met Gimson in the summer of 1907, subsequently described his first impressions: Ernest Gimson: Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect by Annette Carruthers, Mary Greensted and Barley Roscoe is published by Yale University Press.

The White House, Leicester, 1897 for Arthur Gimson

Originality and initiative: the Arts and Crafts archives at Cheltenham. Edited by Mary Greensted and Sophie Wilson. Cheltenham, England: Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museums in association with Lund Humphries, 2003

Walnut was also mainly used as solid timber – often in combination with ebony or Macassar ebony – with fielded panels showing off carefully chosen figuring and revealed dovetails and tenons that highlighted the skills of the makers. In many of these pieces – cabinets, desks, chests and sideboards – the forms were very severe and most of the interest is in the handling of the timber and placing of the metal fittings. Smaller items such as boxes and letter cabinets were made with unusual materials, such as coconut shell and bone, or more traditional luxury ones, including mother-of-pearl, ivory and silver. Occasionally painted decoration was added by Alfred and Louise Powell or modelled gesso by Gimson himself. Figured walnut, mahogany and other cabinet making favourites were also employed as veneers – often in book-matched panels to display the patterning – and corners and edges were emphasised with inlays of chequered holly and ebony or light-catching chamfered beading.At about the same time the firm also cast two bridges, at Upperton Road and Mill Lane, over the Grand Union Canal. The afternoon was devoted to contemporary woodworkers including the local firm Charles Taylor Woodwork responsible for numerous functional but carefully designed and beautifully made pieces for Marchmont including trestle tables based on one of Gimson’s designs. Adrian McCurdy who makes cleft oak furniture and decorative carved panels nearby in Jedburgh is very much part of the living Arts & Crafts tradition through his father Alec, a fine furniture maker who trained with Edward Barnsley at Froxfield near Petersfield. Another contemporary maker Nicholas Hobbs introduced us to his work culminating in his impressive pieces he designed and made for St Hugh’s Chapel, Lincoln Cathedral in 2017 – furniture that is full of meaning yet intensely practical. One of the highlights for many of us was the intensely personal and moving short film The Chair Maker: Lawrence Neal produced by Hugo Burge. The last in line from Gimson’s chair-making enterprise, Lawrence is now being supported to train two apprentices who will carry on the craft in new workshops at Marchmont. Some of Lawrence’s chairs and those of his father are in the regular use at Bedales and a new addendum to the film was a series of interviews with ex-students who treasure their formative experiences studying in the school’s library including the furniture maker David Linley, the Earl of Snowdon.

When his elder brother somewhat reluctantly arranged for the sale of the shares Gimson sent an account of his business. The letter is dated May 1904:

Past Lots

The family remained closely involved with the Secular Movement. In August 1884 Ernest Gimson wrote to his elder brother saying: Carruthers, Annette; Greensted, Mary; Roscoe, Barley. Ernest Gimson : Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect. New Haven: CT: Yale University Press, 2019 Work’ examines his oeuvre in greater detail, from early architectural projects, houses and gardens, to later architectural work and planning schemes, plasterwork, interior decoration and furnishings, furniture design and making, metalwork. It also covers lesser known areas including embroidery and bookbinding. In the final chapter which considers the Gimson tradition, it is notable that Josef Frank of the Austrian Werkbund adapted formal elements from Gimson’s furniture and admired his approach to interior decoration. Lambourne, Lionel. 'The art and craft of Ernest Gimson'. Country Life vol. 146, 7 August 1969 pp. 338-339 Today his furniture and craft work is regarded as a supreme achievement of its period and is well represented in the principal collections of the decorative arts in Britain and the United States of America. Specialist collections of his work may be seen in England at the Leicester Museum & Art Gallery, and in Gloucestershire at the Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, Rodmarton Manor and Owlpen Manor.