Ernest Gimson (1864-1919), was an English furniture designer and architect. Gimson was described by the art critic Nikolaus Pevsner as "the greatest of the English architect-designers". Today his reputation is securely established as one of the most influential designers of the English Arts and Crafts movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner CBE (January 30, 1902 – August 18, 1983) was a German-born British historian of art and, especially, architecture. ... It has been suggested that Handicraft be merged into this article or section. ...

Ernest Gimson was born in Leicester, in the East Midlands of England, in 1864, the son of Josiah Gimson, engineer. Aged 20, he was inspired to become an architect, when he attended a lecture there by the leader of the Arts and Crafts revival in Victorian England, William Morris. Leicester city centre, looking towards clock tower Leicester (pronounced ) is the largest city in the English East Midlands. ... The East Midlands is one of the regions of England and consists of most of the eastern half of the traditional region of the Midlands. ... Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location (dark green) within the United Kingdom (light green), with the Republic of Ireland (blue) to its west Languages English Capital London Largest city London Area – Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population –mid-2004... Look up engineer in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... William Morris, socialist and innovator in the Arts and Crafts movement William Morris, publisher Davids Charge to Solomon (1882), a stained-glass window by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris in Trinity Church, Boston, Massachusetts. ...

Morris recommended him to the architectural practice of John Dando Sedding in London. From Sedding Gimson derived his interest in craft techniques, the stress on textures and surfaces, naturalistic detail of flowers, leaves and animals, always drawn from life, the close involvement of the architect in the simple processes of building and in the supervision of a team of craftsmen employed direct. He met Ernest Barnsley at Sedding’s studio, and soon learnt the crafts of traditional chairmaking and plasterwork. For other uses, see London (disambiguation). ...

In 1889 he joined Morris’s Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB). In 1890, he was a founder member of the short-lived furniture company, Kenton and Co., with Sidney Barnsley, Alfred Powell, W.R. Lethaby, Mervyn Macartney, Col. Mallet and Reginald Blomfield. Here they acted as designers rather than craftsmen and explored inventive ways of articulating traditional crafts, “the common facts of traditional building”, as Philip Webb, “their particular prophet”, had taught. The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) was founded by William Morris in 1877, to oppose what he saw as the insensitive renovation of ancient buildings then occurring in Victorian England. ...

Gimson and the Barnsley brothers moved to the rural region of the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire in 1893 “to live near to nature”. 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, in 1902, 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. The Cotswolds is the name given to a range of hills in central England, sometimes called the Heart of England, a hilly area reaching over 300 m or 1000 feet. ... Gloucestershire (pronounced ; GLOSS-ter-sher) is a county in South West England. ...

His architectural commissions include a number of early works in and around Leicester, such as Inglewood (1892), The White House (1898), Lea and Stoneywell Cottages (and others) at Markfield (1897/8); his own cottage, The Leasowes, at Sapperton (1903, with a thatched roof, since burnt); Bedales School memorial hall and library; alterations to Pinbury Park (with plasterwork) and Water Lane House (1908); cottages and the village hall (built under Norman Jewson in 1933) at Kelmscott; a cob house, Coxen, at Budleigh Salterton, Devon; and the window for Whaplade Church, Lincolnshire. His architectural style is “solid and lasting as the pyramids… yet gracious and homelike” (H. Wilson, 1899). Lethaby described him as an idealist individualist: “Work not words, things not designs, life not rewards were his aims.”

Today his furniture and craft work is well represented in the principal collections of the decorative arts in Britain and the United States of America. Specialist collections of his work may be seen in England at the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, and in Gloucestershire at the Cheltenham Museum and Art Gallery, Rodmarton Manor and Owlpen Manor.

Sources

"Owlpen Manor, Gloucestershire: history and guide", 2000

Alred Powell, "Ernest Gimson, his life and work", 1919

Norman Jewson, "By Chance I did Rove", Cirencester, 1951 (reprinted)