Ernest Gimson: Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect

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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. Greensted, Mary. Craft and Design, Ernest Gimson and the Arts & Crafts Movement. Leicester: Leicestershire Museums and Galleries, 2007

Garden room, French door to the rear elevation with stunning views, wood strip flooring and further French doors to the side elevation. 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. First Floor - Landing, heavily beamed ceiling, exposed timber wall beams and built-in linen cupboard. You are placed on two Sub Committees of the Secular Society and I ditto. The Conference was very firey. One speaker ventured to describe the clergy of today as ‘a horde of bandits’ and another as ‘lowering mankind below the brutes’. Nothing could better please our audience, to them it was about the most enjoyable evening they had had for some time.’ The text is based on extensive new research, with 320 illustrations, many previously unpublished, including photographs from the Gimson family archive, designs, and a number of photographs by James Brittain of buildings, interiors, objects and details.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’.Directory of British Architects 1834-1914. Compiled by Antonia Brodie, et al. Volume 1: A-K. London; New York: British Architectural Library, Royal Institute of British Architects/Continuum, 2001 Harry Davoll (1876-1963) was the second craftsman taken on by Gimson in November 1901. He was one of a number of trade cabinet-makers who became part of this new craft community. He had been born in Derbyshire, served his apprenticeship in Hereford before moving to Waring & Gillow in Liverpool. He was temporarily out of work when he heard about openings in a new country workshop. It was Waals who wrote this offer of employment: 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.

Bedroom 2, built-in wardrobes and bedroom furniture, beamed ceiling and access to roof void and wiring for surround sound.Norman Jewson, who first met Gimson in the summer of 1907, subsequently described his first impressions: And then, of course, there was the venue to luxuriate in. Marchmont House is an impressive Palladian mansion with a wing designed by Sir Robert Lorimer, the Scottish Arts and Crafts architect and a contemporary of Gimson who admired his work. The house is in a beautiful rural location near the town of Duns with extensive grounds seen possibly at their best in the spring sunshine we were blessed with. We were able to appreciate new projects including a fresco painter at work at a mural using the newly-unearthed Marchmont red. From our extremely comfortable bedrooms to the dining area we were surrounded by contemporary art and 19th-century to Arts & Crafts furniture from Pugin through to Gordon Russell. The official part to the day ended with an informal but hands-on look at some of these pieces.

Carruthers, Annette; Greensted, Mary; Roscoe, Barley. Ernest Gimson : Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect. New Haven: CT: Yale University Press, 2019 Bedroom 3, beamed ceilings, built-in wardrobes, corner unit with chest of drawers. En-suite bathroom, tiled bath, shower screen, low level WC, wash hand basin and towel radiator. Simpicity or Splendour. Arts and Crafts Living. Objects from the Cheltenham Collection. Edited by Annette Carruthers and Mary Greensted. London: Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museums in Association with Lund Humphries Publishers, 1999In July 1903 Gimson and his wife moved to their new home at Sapperton. Gimson designed the house, known as The Leasowes himself and it was built by local craftsmen apart from the thatched roof. Gimson loved the soft curves and texture of thatch so much that he was prepared to use it even though it was not common in Gloucestershire. He employed a thatcher from Oxfordshire. Fred Griggs wrote: The house is set in a small garden area that emphasises the wild surroundings and the trees of Charnwood Forest. navvies; called the New Inn, it was run as a publichouse from the 1790s and later changed its name to