Ernest Gimson was an important Arts & Crafts architect and designer. As you probably know, he came across Philip Clissett after seeing his chairs at the Art Workers Guild, and subsequently spent some time at Clissett's workshop learning about chairmaking. He designed rush-seated chairs based on what he learned and, after trying his hand at chairmaking, went into partnership with Edward Gardiner who was rather better at it. Gardiner continued to make chairs long after Gimson's death, and first Neville Neal, then Lawrence Neal, brought the Clissett tradition of chairmaking right up to the present day.

This new book is a complete resurvey of Gimson's life and work...

"An authoritative and insightful study, surveying the life and work of "the greatest of the English artist-craftsmen"

This study of the renowned designer-maker Ernest Gimson (1864-1919) combines biography with analysis of his work as an architect and designer of furniture, metalwork, plaster decoration, embroidery, and more. It also examines Gimson's significance within the Arts and Crafts Movement, tracing the full arc of his creative career, ideas, and legacy. Gimson worked in London in the 1880s, joining the circle around William Morris at the Art Workers' Guild and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. He later moved to the Cotswolds, where he opened workshops and established a reputation for distinctive style and superb quality. Gimson's work influences designers today and speaks directly to ongoing debates about the role of craft in the modern world; this book will be the standard reference for years to come.Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300246261
Number of pages: 372
Dimensions: 267 x 216 mm"

Available from all good booksellers!

Once Philip Clissett’s chairs started to be used at the Art Workers Guild in the late 1880s, they seem to have become very popular amongst Arts & Crafts practitioners. In time, the demand for this type of chair seems to have filtered into the general furniture trade, and a wide variety of designs appears, all loosely based on the Clissett ladderback. This is just one example.

This chair appeared in Heals of London’s catalogue for 1907 (illustrated here), and was manufactured by William Bartlett of High Wycombe (thanks to Oliver Heal for this information). Heals appears to have started buying them in 1900, and stocked them until at least 1920. There was also a side chair. It’s likely that they were sold more widely than just Heals – Norman & Stacey, Artistic House Furnishers of London also seems to have stocked then (thanks to Paul Shutler for this information).

The chair is constructed in, mainly, fumed oak – I think the stretchers are beech. Fuming is a process involving ammonia that darkens the wood and brings out the grain. The rush seat has been replaced in this particular example, and would originally have had edge protectors, strips of thin wood pinned to the edges of the seat to reduce wear to the rush.

Although the chair looks superficially similar to Clissett’s ladderback, there are many differences; the timber is just one. The chair is obviously factory made, having none of the character of a country, handmade item. There is no pegging; it’s held together entirely by glue. The seat edges are curved, making this appear a rather more sophisticated design. Turnings are different too, and the finished parts are thicker and heavier in appearance. While the overall height of the chair is more or less the same as the Clissett, the arms are higher, and the seat is bigger in all dimensions, particularly in depth. Despite the greater depth, it’s not a particularly comfortable chair to sit in. This seems to be due to a very upright back – despite having a curve to the back legs, the designer failed to get any slope into the back, something that Clissett achieved superbly.

While there could be some concern that these chairs might be directly mistaken for Clissett’s work, but I haven’t (yet) seen that happen. But I have seen them offered for sale by two separate dealers as “designed by Ernest Gimson and possibly made by Edward Gardiner”, and by one saleroom as “attributed to C.R. Mackintosh”. These are convoluted errors that dedicated readers of this website will appreciate.

David Knell's book English Country Furniture (1992) contains a photograph of a Philip Clissett ladderback armchair that was "stated to have been one of a small set bought directly from (Ernest) Gimson by Eric Gill, the calligrapher, as a gift to his sister, Gladys Mary Gill, on the occasion of her marriage in 1909" (see Knell's Figure 299). Knell attributes the chair to Edward Gardiner, Gimson's chairmaker, as so often happens, but it is definitely a Clissett.

In fact, Gill owned at least one Clissett ladderback himself. It can be seen (just, right at the bottom) in the photograph of Gill in his engraving shop in about 1940. Gill was a member of the Art Workers Guild for about five years in the early 20th century, resigning at about the same time as his sister married. He would have known Clissett's chairs from there.

How reliable is the story about the provenance of the set of Clissett chairs that Gill is supposed to have purchased? Well, the chair in Knell's photograph belonged to "a descendant of the original recipient". From Knell's photographic acknowledgements, we can see that this is probably "Mrs R. Stewart-Jones". A little research shows that this is actually the daughter of Gladys Gill by her second marriage. So the provenance is good, and the story reasonable, though it's not possible to corroborate the suggestion that Gimson was obtaining Clissett's chairs for others - essentially acting as an agent.

Except that we know that Gimson bought a good number of chairs from the Clissett workshop as late as 1914, so he clearly stayed in touch with the Clissetts and traded with them, despite having his own chair-making business.

Indulge your passion for rush-seated chairs at a two-day conference at Marchmont House near Berwick-on-Tweed during September, on Friday 14th and Saturday 15th. Marchmont House looks well worth seeing, and the conference is brings together an interesting range of topics including several regional chair traditions. Marchmont has several chairs by Clissett, and there will be a session tracing the origins and legacy of his well-known ladderback.

More details, and a full programme is available on Eventbrite, where you can also make a booking.

Some time ago, I saw this chair on the Antiques Atlas site, advertised as "by Philip Clissett". It's a very handsome chair but, while I will agree that the chair has many of the characteristics of Clissett's work (such as the general construction and the arm support turnings), there are several reasons for NOT accepting the attribution. The main reasons are as follows:

1. There is no "PC" stamp anywhere on the chair. Without this, and recognising that several other makers (e.g. John Warrender and William Cole) made chairs identical to Clissett's, you need good provenance information to make the attribution - e.g. an original bill of sale.
2. Although many stamped Philip Clissett chairs are known, and a reasonable number of Warrender and Cole chairs, none are identical, or even close, in form to the chair in the photograph, as set out below.
3. Stamped armchairs never have arms like the chair in the photograph which are club-shaped with rounded ends.
4. Stamped armchairs never have backs exactly like the chair in the photograph, in particular the dowel top rail, but the spindles are also atypical.
5. This chair is made entirely in some sort of fruitwood. I've never seen a chair by Clissett entirely made in fruitwood (doesn't mean there aren't any). They are usually entirely in ash, though arms and the flat top rail can be in cherry or some other timber.
6. I've seen several chairs that share some characteristics with this one (including being entirely in fruitwood), but they never have the workshop scribe marks that Clissett used to mark the position of side stretcher mortices. While I haven't had my hands on this particular chair, I think it's unlikely that it has these marks. (OK, this is speculation, and doesn't really count.)

The existence of a group of chairs that share characteristics with this one, and many characteristics with Clissett's output, suggests strongly a very local tradition that Clissett was part of. Given that I've logged a total of seventeen chairmakers with the Clissett name, and a total of twenty-one chairmakers in the extended family, the existence of a very local tradition isn't surprising. So are these unstamped chairs coming from other members of the Clissett family? Quite possibly, but this remains an unproven hypothesis until further evidence is found.

It's quite possible that Clissett didn't stamp all his chairs. Indeed, I'm aware of two very unusual chairs in the Hereford Museum where one is stamped "PC" and the other, which is identical, is not. But this doesn't mean that any chair that looks like it could be by Clissett can be attributed to him. As I said before, without the provenance, this is just misleading. As always... Caveat emptor!

The Clissett ladderback chair, designed by James MacLaren, was an important element of the Arts & Crafts Movement in the late 19th century. It has figured prominently in recent publications about the period. Usually, the accompanying text is short on detail and sources, so I've been keen to create a clearer picture of how Clissett's chairs were seen at the time. Some things are obvious, such as the superb collection of Clissett's chairs at the Art Workers Guild in London - that's one of their chairs on the left. But there's a lot more information if you look for it.

So, at long last, I've more or less completed the work on Clissett and the Arts and Crafts Movement. The aim has been to test some of the statements made in the past about Clissett, and to find and publish evidence of his chairs in use in the early days of their popularity. It's possible to show the famous ladderback being used by well known artists and architects. The real surprise has been the extent of their use by the Garden City architects, and the extent to which the chairs were copied, or at least used as the basis for "new" designs. I wrote some time ago about their possible use by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and that text has been taken down and incorporated (in shortened form) in the new piece.

This new section of Philip Clissett's biography can be found on the biography page as Part 4.

The rate of discovery of new Philip Clissett chairs seems to have slowed, but I came across this one because of a photograph of a William Cole chair in Christopher Gilbert's book English Vernacular Furniture 1750-1900. Enquiries at Leeds led to this unusual armchair also owned by the Gallery. 

The chair is unusual chiefly because it is a spindleback with tapered arm supports, and the broad flat arms - these are exactly the type seen on most of Clissett's well-known ladderbacks. They contrast sharply with the bulbous arms support and the deeper light or heavy arms usually seen on the spindlebacks. This cross-over could indicate that this spindleback is later in date, with a customer demanding these elements from the ladderback. Alternatively, it's equally possible that these elements always existed in Clissett's repertoire, but were rarely used. Unfortunately, in the absence of perfect provenance for the spindleback chairs, we cannot date them to any particular phase of Clissett's life.

The use of these elements from the ladderback links this chair with an unstamped hybrid chair discussed in an earlier post. That chair has pretty good provenance, and the existence of this very similar chair with Clissett's stamp makes it even more likely that it is one of his.

The Leeds chair is also unusual in having a crest rail made from sycamore. Clissett often used cherry for the crest rail and the arms; walnut and laburnum have also been recorded.

A photograph of this chair also appears in Christopher Gilbert's Furniture at Temple Newsam House and Lotherton Hall.

I am very grateful to Adam Toole of Lotherton Hall for all his help with this chair, and for providing the photograph.

I've just received this wonderful catalogue for an exhibition currently being held at the Fundación Juan March in Madrid; titled (in English) William Morris and company: the Arts and Crafts movement in Great Britain. A Philip Clissett ladderback chair is item number 219 in the exhibition, and features in two further photographs in the catalogue, a shot of the meeting hall at the Art Workers Guild, and a fabulous, full-page c1903 image of Emery Walker's house in Hammersmith Terrace, London. This exhibition comes hot on the heels of the 2014-15 National Portrait Gallery exhibition Anarchy and Beauty. William Morris and his Legacy 1860-1960, which also featured Clissett's chair several times in its catalogue, as well as on display.

The catalogue for the Madrid exhibition is an extremely well illustrated overview of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and runs to nearly 500 pages. Judging by the website, the exhibition would be well worth a visit if you're in Madrid any time up to 21 January 2018. After that, it will be in Barcelona at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya from 22 February to 21 May 2018.

I've just uploaded a revised version of the section on "Philip Clissett's Workshop and Working Methods". It includes some new discoveries, and a few corrections. As usual, if anyone spots any errors or inconsistencies, or if anything doesn't make sense (particularly to anyone with practical experience of chairmaking), please let us know.