bowl
- Museum number
- 1980,0507.1
- Description
-
Bowl; hammered brass, with repoussé acorn and oak-leaf decoration in the centre and a twisted wirework border.
- Production date
-
1920 (designed;circa)
-
1918-1927 (made;circa)
- Dimensions
-
Diameter: 26.80 centimetres
-
Height: 6 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Text from J. Rudoe, 'Decorative Arts 1850-1950. A catalogue of the British Museum collection'. 2nd ed. no.121.
For the history of the Guild of Handicraft after Ashbee's departure, see McCarthy, F., 'The Simple Life: C.R. Ashbee in the Cotswolds' London 1981 and Cheltenham 1988, Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, 'The Guild of Handicraft 1888-1988', A. Carruthers and F. Johnson.
After the liquidation of the Guild of Handicraft in 1908 (see Ashbee, 'Decorative Arts 1850-1950', Cat. 4) some of the Guildsmen stayed on at Chipping Campden. They formed themselves into a Trust, which lasted until 1919, but continued to practise their own trades. The metalworking shop has remained in uninterrupted existence to the present day, under the direction of various members of the Hart family, and is still located on the first floor of the Silk Mill, which housed the metal workshop when the Guild first came to Campden in 1902.
George Hart (1882-1973) and his brother Will, a wood-carver, were recruited to the Guild by Ashbee in their home town of Hitchin, where Ashbee had come to judge an Arts & Crafts competition. By 1914 George Hart had three assistants in the metalworking shop, but little was produced during the war. From the late 1920s Hart established himself primarily as a silversmith, specialising in presentation pieces and church silver, and supplying work to the Goldsmiths' and Silversmiths' Company in London and then Omar Ramsden (see 'Decorative Arts 1850-1950', Cat. 249-53). Some of his own pieces are illustrated in his book Metalwork for Craftsmen of 1932. The workshop was carried on by his two sons, George and Henry, and is now run by Henry's son David.
During the 1920s George Hart formed a partnership with his half-brother, Reynell Huyshe, whose father, Wentworth Huyshe, had married the Hart brothers' mother after their father's death in 1882. Wentworth Huyshe arrived in Campden in 1906; he worked intermittently as a heraldic draughtsman, but was not a fully-fledged member of the Guild (McCarthy 1981, 154-5). Reynell Huyshe probably joined the metal workshop before the outbreak of the First World War, but his main involvement was between 1918 and 1927 and the 'Hart & Huyshe' stamp was used during these years. George Hart spent much of this period farming and so this bowl is more likely to have been designed by Reynell Huyshe (information kindly supplied by Frank Johnson, The Guild of Handicraft Trust).
This bowl is inspired by late-medieval brass bowls known as Nuremberg alms dishes, though these were cast not hand-raised. It is likely that the Hart & Huyshe bowl is an earlier Guild model; there was a considerable vogue for medieval brass from Northern Europe in the 1880s (see Art Journal, 1887, 330-32) and 'Nuremberg dishes' were made at this time by other Arts & Crafts groups such as the Keswick School of Industrial Arts (see Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, Catalogue of the Second Exhibition, 1889, 159 no. 262).
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1980
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 1980,0507.1
