Ernest Gimson: Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect

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Garden room, French door to the rear elevation with stunning views, wood strip flooring and further French doors to the side elevation. Friends and colleagues such as Alfred Powell and Fred Griggs commented on his warmth, sincerity and ability to notice and enjoy the good in everything.

Ernest Gimson: Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect by Annette Carruthers, Mary Greensted and Barley Roscoe is published by Yale University Press. Read an excerpt of the lecture 'Art & Socialism' given by William Morris at Leicester Secular Hall. (PDF)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.

Yours of Nov. 10th to hand. Mr. Pugsley has, I suppose, informed you about the conditions. We pay 8d. per hour and offer a permanency to good men. We make high-class furniture only, therefore, we want first-class cabinetmaker. Between 1889 and ‘91 the firm of Gimson and Company cast the great beam engines which pumped sewage as part of a new system of municipal sanitation to combat the recurrent outbreaks of diarrhoea. These can still be seen (sometimes working) at the Abbey Pumping Station, part of Leicester Museums. Herbert also started a newspaper locally, The Leicester Reasoner, for which Gimson was asked to design a masthead. In the course of the project he wrote to his brother, Sydney:Emily Gimson was very musical with a good singing voice. She used to play the piano for the Sunday night dances at the village hall at Sapperton. Margaret James, a pioneer of the English Folk Dance movement alongside Emily Gimson in the first decade of the 20th century, described her as: 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.’

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: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 Ernest William Gimson was born in Leicester in 1864, the fourth child of Josiah and Sarah Gimson. Josiah was an iron-founder who had established the Vulcan Works in Leicester. Ernest attended Franklin's School in Stoneygate, Leicester, before being articled to a local architect, Isaac Barradale. He also attended a course on architecture at the Leicester School of Art, winning national medals for suburban housing and furniture design. decorative plasterwork by Ernest Gimson. (fn. 38) Beechanger contains a tooled stone chimney-piece, and The house is set in a small garden area that emphasises the wild surroundings and the trees of Charnwood Forest. 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]

Nicholas Mander, Owlpen Manor, Gloucestershire: a short history and guide (Owlpen Press, current edition, 2006) OCLC 57576417 ISBN 0-9546056-1-6 The book combines biography with an analysis of Gimson’s work as an architect and designer of diverse items. In ‘Life’, the authors survey Gimson’s life and career, from his upbringing in Leicester to his London training and travels. In the following chapters they chart his early work and involvement with Kenton & Co., his move to the Cotswolds in 1893 and then the Sapperton workshops, concluding with an analysis of his approach to the process of designing. You better bring some of your tools with you, as Mr. P. had delay with his. Please let me know when I can expect you.’Armstrong, Barrie and Armstrong, Wendy. The Arts and Crafts movement in the North East of England: a handbook. Wetherby, England: Oblong Creative Ltd., 2013 Interconnecting sitting/study area/occasional bedroom with leaded window to the front elevation and exposed beams.