Ernest William Gimson (; 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".
Early career
Ernest Gimson was born in
Leicester, in the
East Midlands of England, in 1864, the son of
Josiah Gimson,
engineer and iron founder, founder of Gimson and Company, owner of the Vulcan Works. Ernest was
Articled clerk to the Leicester architect, Isaac Barradale, and worked at his offices on Grey Friars between 1881 and 1885.
Aged 19, he attended a lecture on 'Art and Socialism' at the Leicester Secular Society given by the leader of the Arts and Crafts revival in Victorian England,
William Morris, and, greatly inspired, talked with him until two in the morning, after the lecture.
[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]
Two years later, aged 21, Gimson had both architectural experience and a first class result from classes at Leicester School of Art. He moved to London to gain wider experience, and William Morris wrote him letters of recommendation. The first architectural practice he approached was John Dando Sedding, where he was taken on, and stayed for two years. From Sedding, Gimson derived his interest in craft techniques, the stress on textures and surfaces, naturalistic detail of flowers, leaves and animals, always drawn from life, the close involvement of the architect in the simple processes of building and in the supervision of a team of craftsmen employed direct. Seddings offices were next door to the showrooms of Morris & Co., providing opportunity to see first hand the first flourishing of Arts and Crafts design. He met Ernest Barnsley at Sedding's studio, and through him, Sidney Barnsley, a friendship that was to last the rest of his life.
After a brief period traveling in both Britain and Europe, Gimson settled in London again and in 1889 he joined Morris's Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB). In 1890, he was a founder member of the short-lived furniture company, Kenton and Co., with Sidney Barnsley, Alfred Hoare Powell, W.R. Lethaby, Mervyn Macartney, Col. Mallet and Reginald Blomfield. Here they acted as designers rather than craftsmen and explored inventive ways of articulating traditional crafts, "the common facts of traditional building", as Philip Webb, "their particular prophet", had taught. Gimson had also, through the Art Workers' Guild, become interested in a more hands on approach to traditional crafts, and in 1890 spent time with Philip Clissett in Bosbury, Herefordshire, learning to make rush-seated ladderback chairs. He also began experimenting with plaster work.
Sapperton, Gloucestershire
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
Earl Bathurst. 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. He later built his own house in the village,
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. Gimson, his wife Emily Thomson, and the Barnsley Brothers are all buried in the churchyard of St Kenelm's Church, Sapperton.
Architectural work
Gimson designed many buildings in the UK, with the two most notable being his first new house commission, Inglewood in Leicester, and the National Trust property in Leicestershire called
Stoneywell. Both are now Grade II* Listed in recognition of their architectural importance.
His architectural commissions include:
- Inglewood
- (1892) Gimson purchased the land in the prosperous Leicester suburb of Stoneygate in October 1892 for a new house that he named Inglewood. His first piece of purpose built architecture, it was intended as an expression and an advertisement of his new approach to architecture. A four-bedroomed house with two reception rooms, it has been described as one of the finest expressions of Arts and Craft residential design of its era. The interior was decorated with his own plasterwork and Morris and Company wallpapers.
[Pevsner. N. 2003. Leicestershire and Rutland. New Haven]
- The White House
- (1898) Located around a mile to the north of Inglewood, this new house was designed by Gimson for his half-brother Arthur around 6 years after he completed the other property. The property was made a Grade II Listed Building in 1975.
- The Leasowes
- his own cottage, at Sapperton (1903, with a thatched roof, since burnt);
- alterations to Pinbury Park (with plasterwork) and Waterlane House
- (1908), both in Gloucestershire;
- Kelmscott
- cottages and the village hall (completed under Norman Jewson in 1933), Oxfordshire;
- Coxen
- at Budleigh Salterton, Devon, constructed in cob; the work was done a year or two before the war; this is Mr. Gimson's own description of the manner of its building
- Whaplode Church window
- Lincolnshire.
- Bedales
- His last major project was the Memorial Library (1918–1919) built next to the 1911 Lupton Hall (also a Gimson design) at Bedales School, near Petersfield, Hampshire (where his brother was a teacher) (built at his request by Geoffrey Lupton under Sidney Barnsley supervision and completed in 1921).
Legacy
The Sapperton workshop was closed after Gimson's death, but many of the craftsmen went with Peter van der Waals to his new premises in
Chalford.
His architectural style is "solid and lasting as the pyramids… yet gracious and homelike" (H. Wilson, 1899). Lethaby described him as an idealist individualist: "Work not words, things not designs, life not rewards were his aims." Norman Jewson was his foremost student, who carried his design principles into the next generation and described his studio practices in his classic memoir By Chance I did Rove (1951).
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.
His rush seated chair designs are still being made today by Lawrence Neal within a village craft in Stockton, Warwickshire. Lawrence learnt to make chairs from his father, Neville Neal, who in turn learnt from Edward Gardiner, Ernest Gimson's apprentice.
Notes
Sources
-
Carruthers, Annette, Mary Greensted, and Barley Roscoe (1980). Ernest Gimson : Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. ISBN: 9780300246261.
-
-
Nicholas Mander, Owlpen Manor, Gloucestershire: a short history and guide (Owlpen Press, current edition, 2006)
-
W.R. Lethaby, F.L. Griggs & Alfred Powell, Ernest Gimson, his life and work (1924)
-
Norman Jewson, By Chance I did Rove (Cirencester, 1951 (reprinted))
External links
