Antique Victorian Furniture
Christopher Dresser and Design Reform in the Victorian Era
Victorian designer Christopher Dresser was born in Glasgow, Scotland on July 4, 1834.
From 1847 to 1854 he was a prize-winning student at the Government School of Design. It was here that he met many contemporary reformers of design, including Henry Cole, Richard Redgrave, and especially architect and decorator Owen Jones, who was to be Dresser’s mentor. Dresser contributed botanical designs to Jones’s Grammar of Ornament, which was published in 1856.
Dresser’s initial training was indeed in botany. In 1854 he became a lecturer of botany at the Government School of Design, and he published both textbooks and articles on the subject of botany. It was in 1860, when he failed to be appointed as Chair of Botany at the University of London, that Dresser turned professionally to design.
Dresser authored three books on design, The Art of Decorative Design (1862), The Development of Ornamental Art (1862) and Principles of Design (1871-2). And he embarked on what would prove to be a hugely successful career in commercial design, influenced greatly by his deep knowledge of plants. He was particularly interested in the forms that plants took during their stages of growth. From his perspective nature contained nothing superfluous, and beauty, simplicity of form, and clear function were indivisible.
In 1876 Dresser took a transformational trip to Japan. He was the first European designer commissioned to go to Japan, after Japan reopened its borders in 1854. His commission was to study the techniques of craft and manufacture for the British government. What he saw totally changed his perspective on design.
Previously he had believed that ornamentation was an even higher art than pictorial art, because it was “of wholly mental origin.” And in 1871 he had said, “As an Ornamentist I have much the largest practice in the Kingdom; so far as I know there is not one branch of Art manufacture that I do not regularly design patterns for, and I hold regular appointments as art-adviser and Chief designer to several of our largest art-manufacturing firms.” After the trip to Japan, however, he turned away from ornament, coming to believe that form itself was pleasing to the eye and that ornament was more likely to distract from than enhance form. He passionately advocated Japanese culture and in 1882 published his book Japan: Its Architecture, Art and Art-Manufactures. He was in part responsible for the cult of Japan that permeated Western artistic ideas in the 1880s.
Dresser did a lot of his most influential design starting in the late 1870s, when he was working more and more as an adviser to smaller design firms. For instance, he designed all the effects of the Victorian table for the rapidly expanding Victorian middle class. His commercial success as a designer reached it height in 1880, when the recently established Art Furnishers’ Alliance appointed him art manager. The Alliance set up shop, supplying “everything” for the home. And Dresser either designed or approved every item. The Alliance, for reasons left to speculation, only lasted several years, however; and Dresser spent the last 20 years of his life designing from his own studio.
Dresser’s overall achievements were enormous. Today he is known as Britain’s first independent industrial designer. He designed furniture, carpets, wallpaper, pottery, glass, textiles, metalware, silver and electroplate. He was a champion of design reform in the Victorian era. From the beginning of his career, he created designs suitable for machine and mass production. His goal was to create the highest form of design while utilizing industrial processes.
Unlike his famous contemporary William Morris, who advocated hand-craftsmanship, Dresser linked together industrial mass production and high-quality design. His confidence in technology led the way for future designers, and many of his designs anticipate 20th century functionalism. Any serious collector of antique Victorian furniture or other Victorian decorative arts is familiar with Dresser’s name and innovative style of design.
Christopher Dresser died in France on December 24, 1904.
