Job satisfaction
The pleasure of making things well, whether in a garret or a bustling studio, shines through sales of Cotswold-tradition furniture
IHAVE been thinking about the old distinctions made between the fine and the decorative arts, between art and craft, and similarly between profession and trade, or amateur and professional, in preparation for a talk I am to give in April. All except the last pair were definitions intended to enhance the acquisition of wealth and status by creating a hierarchy within the art world. Amateur and professional are an anomaly, as higher status was accorded to amateurs in art or sport precisely because they gained no wealth by it.
In the Western tradition, the visual fine arts were sculpture and painting, in that order. They were accorded their superiority because they were supposed to produce works that were the product of a single hand and eye, rather than collaborative operations. In fact, the cliché of the artist—whether starving or not —alone in his garret, was rarely true of the more successful and many studios operated on a nearindustrial scale, with apprentices, assistants and collaborators who might confusingly be termed ‘servants’. Today, it would be hard to differentiate between the production methods that create Damien Hirst spot paintings and, say, Edward Barnsley furniture.
Barnsley (1900–87) was steeped in the Cotswold traditions exemplified by his father and uncle, Sidney and Ernest, and their friend and partner Ernest Gimson, all themselves influenced by William Morris. Barnsley was self-deprecating about his reputation as ‘the Grand Old Man of Designer Craftsmen’ and insistent that his was a collaborative venture, unlike his father’s. His belief was that ‘a happy design and a well-made job plays a fairly high ranking part in human affairs. And an even greater, far greater, importance lies in the actual making’.
Although his furniture is now regarded as ‘Cotswold School’ work, Barnsley was based in
Froxfield, Hampshire, where he trained with Geoffrey Lupton (himself trained by Gimson), before taking over the business and most of the craftsmen in 1925. As the Edward Barnsley Workshops, it continues to produce furniture of the highest quality.
In a similar manner, when Gimson died in 1919, his foreman Peter Waals (1870–1937) set up his own workshop at Chalford, Gloucestershire, with many of his former colleagues. They executed designs for the architect and town planner Anthony Minoprio, who later also commissioned pieces from Barnsley. Minoprio had clear ideas about furniture design and his collaboration with Peter Waals produced a group of pieces that combined typical Cotswold School features (such as revealed construction, inlaid lines and solid English timbers) with elements that were distinctively of their time. Barnsley came to use more exotic woods, chosen for their beauty.
Both Minoprio and his son John, an equestrian photographer, collected not only Waals and Barnsley pieces, but also the best examples of other Cotswold makers that they could find with Burford and London Arts-andcrafts dealers. Last month, 66 lots from their joint collection were sold most successfully by Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh, far to the north of their home area.
In 1952, the first piece commissioned from Barnsley by Anthony Minoprio was a freestanding boot-and-shoe cupboard (Fig 2) in walnut inlaid with ebony and sycamore, which cost £161.10s (equivalent to £4,952 today). It was estimated to £3,000 and sold for £30,000, a Barnsley record.
An unexpected price was the £8,750 paid for a walnut and yew table lamp (Fig 3) estimated to £600. It was made in about 1950 by Hugh Birkett (1919–2002), who made Gimson-influenced domestic and church furniture, including coffins, and worked in Moreton-in-marsh.
John Minoprio bought his first Cotswold pieces in 1961 and continued to buy for more than 30 years. One commission was for a writing cabinet in Indian rosewood inlaid with sycamore and ebony with a walnut interior (Fig 1). It bears an inscription under a drawer: ‘This writing desk was designed for Mr John Minoprio by Edward Barnsley and made by assistant George Taylor in the Froxfield Workshop in 1971.’ It had the later Barnsley ‘signature’ handles that are incorporated into the top edge of the drawers for a ‘smoother appearance with minimal disruption to the grain of the wood’. This sold for £22,500.
About 10 years later, Mr Minoprio acquired the last pieces to be designed by Barnsley himself, to furnish his office.
A happy design and a well-made job plays a highranking part in human affairs
All in Indian padouk, with sycamore and ebony inlays, these were a desk (Fig 6), which sold for £18,750, a two-drawer filing cabinet (Fig 5), which made £5,250, and a low coffee table with similar inlay, at £2,125. The desk had the integrated drawer handles and, another Barnsley trademark, sinuously curving stretchers.
The final piece to be acquired was an oak table designed by James Ryan at the workshops in 2015 and was the only item to be coloured, to make it seem as if made from one block (Fig 4). The black finish was achieved by scorching and brushing before the application of a solution of vinegar and iron oxide. This was bid to £6,875.
By chance, a sale at Sworders of Stansted Mountfitchet two weeks later also included Artsand-crafts and Cotswold pieces. Rather lower prices for the latter indicated the value added by provenance to a good collection. A handsome mahogany cabinet on a stand (Fig 9) designed by George Washington Jack—a Scotstrained American—for Morris & Co in about 1900, which reached £3,640, looked heavy by comparison with Barnsley’s work.
At £550, there was a table lamp with its original shade (Fig 7), a fine contrast to the Birkett at Lyon & Turnbull. This was a 1920s Art Deco pottery example moulded with marabou storks and retailed by Aladin, France.
To add further colour to these pages are two lots I admired. First, a ruby lustre charger
(Fig 10) by William De Morgan (1839–1917), which sold for £19,500, despite scratching. The design featured a central merman with putti dancing round the rim. More colourful still were the elements of a stained-glass window of Faith, Hope and Charity
(Fig 8) by Wilhelmina Geddes (1887–1955).
Ulster-born, Geddes worked in Dublin and London, and her windows greatly impressed the young John Piper. In 1949, he recommended her to Chad
Varah (of Toc H), rector of St Paul’s, Battersea, who was making good war damage. One can certainly see a kinship to Piper’s glorious colours. The now redundant church has been converted for housing and one must hope the window, which made £14,300, finds its own good new home.
Next week Naive, and not so