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Christopher Dresser: The Man Who Reshaped DesignA magnificent show at the V&A reveals the genius of Christopher Dresser, the forgotten figure of the Victorian art world, says Richard Dorment.
Christopher Dresser is the invisible man of the Victorian art world. Though he is credited with the invention of a whole new profession - that of industrial design - his name is far less well known than those of Ruskin, Morris, Pugin or Burges.
Unlike them, he came from a humble background, not from the educated middle class. The son of a petty official, he was born in 1834, the same year as William Morris. At the age of 13 he entered the Government School of Design, then located at Somerset House and intended only for the sons of artisans.
The aim of the school was to turn out commercial designers for British industry, not to nurture fine artists. To this end, he was taught to draw not from the human figure but from plants and flowers sent over from Kew Gardens. But after graduating, instead of taking his allotted place among the jobbing draughtsmen in British manufacturing, he became one of the most original and prolific of all Victorian designers.
Among his heroes was one of the great Victorian reformers of design, the architect Owen Jones. That the young Dresser contributed an exquisite watercolour study of flowers to illustrate Jones's book The Grammar of Ornament seems
more: www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jht... (228)
September 8, 2004 | Viewed 19,828 time(s)
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