Christopher Dresser was one of the first independent industrial designers. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1834 and died in 1904, which put him at around 70 years of age. To say he was talented is a bit of an understatement since he did a little of everything, from wallpaper to textiles, glass to metal ware. He was born into a nonconformist family with a tax collector, or excise officer, as a father. So he moved around a lot till he was a teenager, when he got accepted into the Government School of Design, which was supposed to improve British design for industry by combining art and science. During his studies there, Dresser met many important design reformers of the day: Henry Cole, Richard Redgrave and his mentor, Owen Jones.
This image is of cranes that, along with be very beautiful birds, are apparently the Japanese symbol of longevity. They are flying over stylized waves, all of which is just white images on a dark blue background. Dresser had taken Japanese inspiration to make this, with the composition being roughly the same as a Japanese blue and white ceramic flowerpot.
By the early 1860s, Dresser was working for the Minton factory as a designer and his early work for them was often inspired by Persian artwork, like the vase in the picture above that he made. The shape of this vase takes its inspiration from Persian, with is long narrow top and bulb shaped bottom. It follows his idea of “the ornament must tend to emphasize the beautiful quality of the object and not destroy the form.” He also admired the intricate interlacing patterns associated with Persian ornament.
Dresser illustrated this chair in 1873 as “in the manner of an Egyptian chair.” It certainly looks like a chair from Egypt in my opinion if you take off the armrests. It was stressed while the chair was made that a chair soundly designed allowed the person sitting in it to be more confident — unlike many other examples. Although Dresser accepted the position that some parts of the chair were not perfect, he did approve of it from a stylistic and historical perspective.
It is apparently a toast/letter rack, though if you knew that at first glance I congratulate you. It is a very nice piece of metal work none the less. It does show how Dresser wanted to make easily manufactured, functional, and novel designs. It was an affordable product in the growing consumer market, and at the same time it was well designed. Cheap to make and fast to sell has always been the best way to make money in any market.
This silver-plated tea set was designed in the late 1870s. Dresser had just returned from Japan, which was where he got the inspiration of all the pieces fitting inside of each other. That would obviously save space in the kitchen. While the design is from Japan, the bamboo on the handles idea was actually from Asia, which keeps you from burning your hands on the metal.
A simple biscuit box and lid made beautiful by pattern alone. Actually inspired by nature for this one, Dresser got the idea from frost on a window pane. It represents his idea of “power, energy, force, and vigor” in one pattern. It was originally for stained glass but the common earthenware material combined with the silver-plated mounts appealed to him.
An example of his wallpaper designs; this is one that repeats a fan-shaped flower pattern in gold and red, with a little bit of green to accent the red. It is actually a very nice color scheme in my opinion. Like many of Dresser’s artwork, this one was inspired by Japanese art though he knows this type of art is only for a flat design. He elaborates in Principles of Decorative Design, “The ornamentist when enriching a fabric deals only with a surface, and has no thought of placing pictures thereon; he has simply to enrich or beautify that which without his art would be plain and unornamental.”
Mr. Dresser began designing “art glass” for industrial manufacture around 1880. Reacting against the fashion for cut glass, Dresser and some other designers called for reform in glass production. This glass vase shows how he loved the artistic medium of glass and its fluid qualities. The ornamental features of the vase are found in its coloring and ribbed spiraling pattern, which had to be added to the glass or it would have come out smoother like typical glass. Air bubbles, streaks of color, and other irregularities were intentional, as they emphasized the organic nature of glass.
First off, this is a very awesome bowl. The shape and color are so strange that it will catch anyone’s eye no matter where you put it. Anyway, the bowl reflects various sources that Mr. Dresser relied on. It was made after his trip to Japan in 1876-1877. Japanese prints strongly influenced European decorative arts in the second half of the nineteenth century and, though he didn’t copy the Japanese prototypes, Dresser did use key design elements that suggest Japanese aesthetics. Like the powerful curve of Katsushika Hokusai’s famous woodblock print The Great Wave at Kanagawa is echoed in the shape of this bowl.
This tureen and ladle have a simple sort of elegance, which shows how much Japanese metalwork influences Dresser’s approach to design. He put a lot of attention into the nature of the materials he used, like here the strong horizontal of the banding echoes the flat lid and straight ivory handles. The beauty in this piece really is in how simple it is, as Dresser says, “the beautiful must be truthful in expression, and graceful, delicate, and refined in contour, manifesting no coarseness, vulgarity, or obtrusiveness … the beautiful manifests no want, no shortcomings.”
Toward the end of his life, Christopher Dresser primarily designed for wallpaper and textile manufacturers. He died in Mulhouse, while on a business trip to France with his son, Louis, in 1904. After his death, two of his daughters took over his design studio but were unable to maintain it.
by Samantha Davis