Biography
William Simmonds: the silent heart of the Arts and Crafts Movement Jessica Douglas-home (Unicorn, £20)
William Simmonds (1876– 1968) was a sculptor, carver, puppet maker and puppeteer, who belonged to the Cotswolds’ arts-and-crafts migration. Jessica Douglas-home’s elegantly written new biography of this too overlooked artist brilliantly conveys to the reader that idealistic world of artists and makers.
John masefield wrote of this circle: ‘We were the last of the Pre-raphaelite followers. all of us were… deeply under the spell of William morris.’ This group included architects, painters, potters, textile artists, furnituremakers, writers and musicians, who settled around Sapperton. a heroic generation, the circle’s younger members lived through two World Wars and their idealism was sorely tested, but they remained faithful to their art.
The author knew this world as a child, when she was sent to have drawing lessons with the elderly William Simmonds, which gives her a personal link to this high-minded world and inspired her scrupulous research.
Simmonds was born in Constantinople (where his father was working on the reconstruction of the British embassy—he later settled in eton). he was impeccably trained in the practice of art, in the 1890s at the national art Training School, which became the Royal College of art, and was influenced by Walter Crane, who championed the importance of studying from nature: ‘our english designers should throw into their art all they knew of their english life and surroundings… our english fields and gardens in the fresh glory of the springtime.’
Simmonds studied at the Royal academy Schools from 1899 to 1904, where he was taught by Sargent, Solomon J. Solomon and George Clausen and worked for edwin abbey as an assistant in his Gloucestershire studio. Simmonds began to take an interest in the history and carving of puppets, which his wife, eve— a trained artist and musician— supported with costumes and music. The carving of puppets and related performances became a central feature of his life.
in the First World War, Simmonds remarkably found himself working (secretly) as a draughtsman developing early models for armoured tanks under inventor Col Crompton and then aircraft for Sir Geoffrey de havilland.
after the War, the Simmondses moved to a cottage in Far oakridge, near Sapperton, where he finally left off painting and devoted himself to sculpting, carving and puppets, which received national critical acclaim in exhibitions in the 1920s and 1930s.
The couple’s circle included Detmar Blow, Dorothy Larcher and Violet Gordon-woodhouse.
Despite the great shudder of the Second World War, Simmonds was steadfast to the morrisianinspired world and spent the latter part of his life devoted to carving, recognised as ‘the calm still centre of the movement’ as it survived into the postwar world. Jeremy Musson