Ernest Gimson: Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect

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Principal bedroom, exposed roof trusses, beams and purlins, hand built double hanging wardrobes and matching dressing table, chest of drawers, corner cupboard and beside cabinets. Secondary double glazed lead windows with panoramic views over the garden and Charnwood Forest towards Old John. The area is particularly well placed for fast access into Leicester and the Endowed Schools at Loughborough, whilst junction 22 of the M1 motorway is at nearby Markfield. Are you going to be surprised or has some little gossip reached you before this. I am told that it has been expected of me for some time and I hardly wonder at it. No doubt Maggie and Sarah have more or less prepared you, as I imagine my behaviour to have prepared them. Well, I’ve been falling in love and getting engaged - to Emmie Thompson. I had a nice letter from her mother this morning and soon I hope to have another nice one from my mother.’ Interconnecting sitting/study area/occasional bedroom with leaded window to the front elevation and exposed beams. The architect’s layout of streets, public spaces, and important buildings, meanwhile, shows the influence of the aesthetic principles of the Austrian urbanist Camillo Sitte, now unjustly neglected since being contemptuously derided by Le Corbusier and other leading modernists.

Ernest William Gimson ( / ˈ dʒ ɪ m s ən/; 21 December 1864 – 12 August 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". [1] 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.Made cakes. After dinner, thunderstorm. I swept the barn. At 4 all Pinbury assembled for tea, after which we had lovely games of all kinds. I liked 'Adverbs' best, I think, but what was finest was Mr Gimson's reciting of Lord Dunsany - his stammer. Then home to supper and bed. Ernest William Gimson [commonly known as Ernest Gimson] was was born in Leicester, Leicestershire, England, on 21 December 1864 and was articled to Isaac Barradale (1845-1902) in Leicester. He also attended Leicester School of Art. In 1884 he met William Morris following a lecture he gave at the Leicester Secular Society on 'Art and socialism'. He encouraged Gimson to go to London and recommended him to the architect John Dando Sedding (1838-1891). He subsequently worked in Sedding's office from 1886 to 1888. He met Ernest Barnsley (1863-1926) at Seddings studio and through him, his brother Sidney Barnsley (1865-1926), with whom he formed a lasting friendship.

Josiah Gimson died in 1883 when Gimson was 18. The business was left to Ernest’s two half-brothers, Josiah Mentor and Arthur, his elder brother Sydney and his cousin Josiah. Gimson also attended classes at Leicester School of Art, taking courses in advanced Building Construction and entering designs for a number of competitions. In 1884 he was awarded a silver medal for a design for a Suburban House and, in the following year, won a third grade prize for a set of designs for furniture. Today his furniture and craft work is regarded as a supreme achievement of its period and 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 & Art Gallery, and in Gloucestershire at the Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, Rodmarton Manor and Owlpen Manor. Both men were on a sketching tour of northern England having just completed their architectural training. In a letter to his sister Margaret, known as Maggie, the 24-year old Gimson wrote: Although many friends and colleagues commented on the pleasure they took in the company of children, Ernest and Emily Gimson were childless.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] Gimson and the Barnsley brothers moved to the rural region of the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire in 1893 "to live near to nature". They soon settled at Pinbury Park, near Sapperton, on the Cirencester estate, under the patronage of the Bathurst family. 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, 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, whom he engaged in 1901. 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.’ Sydney Gimson owned an iron foundry in Leicester and wanted a summer retreat in the idyllic countryside setting of Charnwood Forest where he, his wife Jeannie and their two children could escape from the noise and smoke of the industrial city. He turned to his brother Ernest, one of the most influential artists in the Arts and Crafts Movement. Another highlight at Marchmont House was the personal and moving short film The Chairmaker: Lawrence Nealby Falcon Productions for Marchmont Farms Ltd. The last in line from Gimson’s chair-making enterprise, Neal is now being supported to train two apprentices who will carry on the craft in new workshops at Marchmont. Some of Lawrence Neal’s chairs, and those of his father Neville Neal, are in regular use at Bedales School in Hampshire, and a new addendum to the film was shown for the first time – a series of interviews with current and ex-students who treasure their formative experiences studying in the school’s Gimson-designed library. Ernest Gimson and the Legacy of Sustainability