Ernest Gimson: Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect

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Ernest Gimson was one of eleven children born to Josiah Gimson, six of whom survived to maturity. The family lived 4 Belmont Villas, now 118 New Walk, and he was sent to Franklin’s School in Stoneygate. He was not considered strong as a child and was sent for holidays to the Morleys, cousins who ran a farm of Lincolnshire, to benefit from outdoor life and fresh air. Despite growing up in an urban environment, or perhaps because of it, the countryside around Leicester played an important part in the family’s recreational activities. Comino, Mary. Gimson and the Barnsleys - ‘Wonderful furniture of a commonplace kind’. London: Evans Brothers, 1980 Barradale was also designing villas in the pleasant south suburbs of the city including one in Knighton Park Road in 1882 for Joseph Harrison, head of the School of Art. Here the dramatic lines of its steeply-pitched roof are broken up by the introduction of dormer windows. The house also includes incised plasterwork on the coving between the walls and the roof. He left Barradale’s office at some point between the end of 1883 and early in 1884.

The room was quiet, restful and dignified; in 1892, when the crowding and fussiness of the Victorian period still lingered in many homes, it might have seemed almost austere. First one noted the proportions of the room, which measured ten by seven of my paces without the bay, and was lofty, the top of the door only coming about two-thirds of the way up to the ceiling. Then one became aware that the room was well lit by its two windows on the north and the bay on the south, but not over-lit, so as to give and unsheltered feeling; one should surely feel an interior as such, unless it is a kind of garden-room or a sun-bathing annexe of the house. On one occasion at least he used the attitude of his craftsmen to deflect any criticism of his designs. When the architect, Philip Webb, wrote commenting critically on the plain outline of a cabinet, Gimson replied: Armstrong, Barrie and Armstrong, Wendy. The Arts and Crafts movement in the North East of England: a handbook. Wetherby, England: Oblong Creative Ltd., 2013 In 1893 Gimson and his friends Sidney and Ernest Barnsley moved to Ewen in Gloucestershire, convinced that to make good work they had to live in natural and unspoiled surroundings. He and Ernest Barnsley formed a furniture making business. Gimson married Emily Ann Thompson in 1900 and the families moved to Sapperton, Gloucestershire, in 1902. Gimson built himself a large cottage and established a workshop and show rooms for the furniture business. However, in 1905 Gimson's partnership with Ernest Barnsley broke down and he continued the workshops alone. Leicester had expanded dramatically in the nineteenth century from a market town into an industrial city, a major centre for commerce and manufacturing. There was money to be made but also increasing problems of poverty and disease.As a young man in Leicester, Gimson met William Morris after hearing him talk on art and socialism. Morris encouraged him to carry on his architectural training in London and gave him an introduction to the ecclesiastical architect John Sedding. In London, Gimson became part of an enthusiastic circle of young architects who included William Lethaby, Alfred Powell, and the brothers, Ernest and Sidney Barnsley. Lambourne, Lionel. 'The art and craft of Ernest Gimson'. Country Life vol. 146, 7 August 1969 pp. 338-339 Like many of his Arts and Crafts associates, Charles Robert Ashbee worked across a range of different design disciplines, ranging from interior decoration to jewellery. He established the Guild and School of Handicraft in 1888 to help realise the potential of craftspeople working in the East End of London. This organisation specialised in metalworking, and in the late 1890s Ashbee and his associates began to design and produce silver tableware. Reacting deliberately against factory production, the Guild produced pieces whose hand-made status was emphasised by details such as visible hammer marks. Ashbee's designs were celebrated for their simplicity and focus, and his restrained aesthetic had a significant influence on contemporary silver design not only in Britain but also Europe and America.

Ernest Barnsley and his younger brother Sidney both trained as architects. After graduation Sidney completed his training at London architect Norman Shaw, a proponent of 'Old English' style, and Ernest at John Dando Sedding, an influential Arts and Crafts designer. It was through Ernest working for Sedding that he and later Sidney met Ernest Gimson [see below], a fellow trainee architect. In 1893 Gimson and Sidney Barnsley persuaded Ernest to leave his accelerating architectural career to join them in setting up a craft community in Sapperton in Gloucestershire, that was to focus on working with local people and materials. Here the Barnsley brothers produced furniture that adhered to the Arts and Crafts ideal: visible construction, simple structures and limited decoration. Emery Walker, the printer and associate of William Morris, got to know Gimson in London in the late 1880s. Following the move to the Cotswolds in 1893, Walker was one of many London friends to visit Gimson and the Barnsleys for weekends and holidays. Dorothy Walker, his only child, was twenty-one on their first long holiday in the Cotswolds in the summer of 1899. She was charmed by Gimson. She described days trying out the chair making lathe in the workshop, drawing, playing croquet and walks and picnics and evenings spent playing games or listening to his creepy ghost stories and songs. Here are some of the entries from her diary: First Floor - Landing, heavily beamed ceiling, exposed timber wall beams and built-in linen cupboard. Williams-Ellis, Clough (1920). Cottage Building in Cob, Pisé, Chalk & Clay. London: George Newnes. p.35. Ernest Gimson, who died on the 12th of August 1919, was described by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘the greatest of the English artist-craftsmen’. Gimson made significant contributions as an architect, a maker of plasterwork and turned chairs, and as a designer of embroideries and metalwork, but is probably best known today for his furniture. So how do you mark the centenary of one of Britain’s greatest Arts & Crafts designers?Ernest Gimson: Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect by Annette Carruthers, Mary Greensted and Barley Roscoe is published by Yale University Press. Sitting room, a wonderful feature inglenook fireplace with open fire, exposed beams and wall light points. The architect’s layout of streets, public spaces, and important buildings, meanwhile, shows the influence of the aesthetic principles of the Austrian urbanist Camillo Sitte, now unjustly neglected since being contemptuously derided by Le Corbusier and other leading modernists. A stunning Grade II listed thatched cottage nestling within the highly sought after Charnwood Forest.

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.

Early 20th Century Leicester

I certainly take Mr Gimson's view, at least as much as I have ever thought of it. That it would be fearful to imagine in a world to come an everlasting time that would go on for ever. It appals me quite.’ Godfrey Blount was a painter who was deeply influenced by the ideas of leading art critic of the Victorian era, John Ruskin. In 1896 Blount and his wife Ethel moved to Haslemere in Surrey to join Ethel's sister, Maud, and her husband Joseph, who had established the Haslemere Peasant Industries. This group of workshop-based craft enterprises together formed an artistic community that aimed at obtaining 'the double pleasure of lovely surroundings and happy work'. The Blounts later set up their own enterprise called the Peasant Arts Society, which used local women to produce hand-woven pile carpets and simple embroidered appliqués on linen known as 'peasant tapestries'. Made to Blount's designs, the tapestries were used as door curtains, casement curtains, bed spreads and bed hangings, and became very fashionable in artistic circles. His last visit to London was a short one, during the illness that proved fatal. We had taken him up to see a specialist from whom a hopeful verdict would have meant a longer stay and an operation; when we had to return the same afternoon to Paddington, he alone could smile – because he was not to stay in London, but could return to the country and his home for the last few days.’ Comino, Mary (1980). Gimson and the Barnsleys:'Wonderful furniture of a commonplace kind' . London: Evans Brothers Limited. ISBN 0237448955. As an architectural student in London in the 1880s, Gimson’s circle included many socialists including William Morris and his friend Philip Webb and fellow-students William Lethaby and W R Butler. In February 1888 he wrote to his friend Ernest Barnsley:

In 1884 Gimson heard William Morris deliver a lecture and had the opportunity to meet him afterwards. Morris encouraged Gimson to move to London and helped him secure a position at the offices of J.D. Sedding, a church architect. Gimson was fascinated by traditional crafts and learned practical skills such as rush-seated chair making and moulded and modelled plasterwork. As he grew older Gimson became more and more uncomfortable in big cities. After his death, the architect and engraver Fred Griggs remembered how once: Nicholas Hobbs also introduced attendees to his work, culminating in the impressive pieces he designed and made for St Hugh’s Chapel at Lincoln Cathedral in 2017 – furniture that is full of meaning yet intensely practical. Lawrence Neal The text is based on extensive new research, with 320 illustrations, many previously unpublished, including photographs from the Gimson family archive, designs, and a number of photographs by James Brittain of buildings, interiors, objects and details. The book keeps alive the spirit of a designer and craftsman who, as his contemporary William Lethaby observed, was motivated by ‘work not words, things not designs, life not rewards’. Sydney Gimson owned an iron foundry in Leicester and wanted a summer retreat in the idyllic countryside setting of Charnwood Forest where he, his wife Jeannie and their two children could escape from the noise and smoke of the industrial city. He turned to his brother Ernest, one of the most influential artists in the Arts and Crafts Movement.

An impressive building for industry

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 to the Leicester architect, Isaac Barradale, and worked at his offices on Grey Friars between 1881 and 1885. [2] 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. [3] Carruthers, Annette and Greensted, Mary. Good citizen’s furniture: the Arts and crafts collections at Cheltenham. Cheltenham, England: Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museums in association with Lund Humphries, 1994 Another highlight at Marchmont House was the personal and moving short film The Chairmaker: Lawrence Nealby Falcon Productions for Marchmont Farms Ltd. The last in line from Gimson’s chair-making enterprise, Neal is now being supported to train two apprentices who will carry on the craft in new workshops at Marchmont. Some of Lawrence Neal’s chairs, and those of his father Neville Neal, are in regular use at Bedales School in Hampshire, and a new addendum to the film was shown for the first time – a series of interviews with current and ex-students who treasure their formative experiences studying in the school’s Gimson-designed library. Ernest Gimson and the Legacy of Sustainability Gimson’s first interest in this field arose during his architectural apprenticeship in his native Leicester. The son of Josiah Gimson, who had established a successful engineering company, Ernest Gimson was articled to Isaac Barradale in 1884 and also attended classes at the local School of Art. As part of the South Kensington National Training Course he submitted drawings to the National Competition, including some for drawing-room furniture. Sadly these appear to have been lost. They gained him a silver prize medal but also, rather surprisingly, the comment that they were ‘based on an illogical, fantastical, unfruitful and embarrassing style’. Described elsewhere as in ‘a refined kind of Chippendale style’, they presumably reflected the teaching of the course and late-Victorian interest in the ‘golden age’ of the eighteenth century. Bedroom 2, built-in wardrobes and bedroom furniture, beamed ceiling and access to roof void and wiring for surround sound.