A pair of nineteenth century lacquered bronze and wrought iron andirons designed by architect Edward William Godwin and manufactured by Hart, Son, Peard & Co. have been acquired by the Museum of High-quality Arts in Houston. That is the primary time metalwork designed by Godwin has been purchased by a museum.
The vendor, Paul Shutler of Broadway, Worcestershire, UK, purchased them from an antiques heart in Connecticut final June. Earlier than being positioned on sale there they had been in a non-public assortment within the US. They’re a good distance from their origins in a stately house on the sting of Sherwood Forest.
Edward William Godwin was an English architect and furnishings designer who was one of many leaders of the Aesthetic motion in England and a pioneer in melding Japanese artwork with conventional and modern English fashion. Born in Bristol in 1833, Godwin was apprenticed to an architect and engineer proper out of secondary college. He started engaged on commissions earlier than he was 20 years previous. He established his personal observe in 1854, however his profession actually took off together with his first massive fee, the Northampton Guildhall in 1864.
He began out as an adherent of artwork critic John Ruskin’s Gothic revivalism however by the mid-1860s was firmly ensconced within the Aesthetic motion. He was a buddy and collaborator of James McNeill Whistler’s within the 1870s, designing Whistler’s Japanese-influenced house, the White Home, in Chelsea.
Godwin started designing his personal furnishings and inside from 1867 as a result of he discovered nothing commercially accessible that suited his revolutionary Anglo-Japanese fashion. When he designed the seventh Earl Cowper’s Beauvale Home in Newthorpe simply outdoors of Nottingham, in 1872, he designed a lot of its furnishings as nicely, though he had leaned into the Robin Hood associations of the placement and designed Beauvale Home in Outdated English Revival fashion.
Hart, Son, Peard & Co made all the ironwork for Beauvale Home to Godwin’s specs. That features the hearth furnishings. You possibly can see on this full fireplace grate set from Beavale Home has the identical entrance guards and legs with the floral medallion tops, solely the guards are all forged iron and the lacquered bronze has nearly worn off the tops.
That doesn’t imply that the andirons now within the assortment of the Museum of High-quality Arts in Houston got here from Beauvale Home. Hart, Son, Peard & Co had been promoting their forged and wrought iron architectural options (railings, balusters, lamp posts, gates) for church buildings, public buildings and houses in a catalog since 1970, and in 1873, they branched out to furnishings too. Godwin’s Beauvale fireplace set was listed within the 1876 catalog in a number of totally different end choices — “Berlin black and brass discs,” “Berlin black with shiny canine,” or “Berlin black all shiny,” — in 4 totally different heights — 18, 20, 22 and 24 inches. The Museum of High-quality Arts examples are 22 inches excessive and are the intense canine.
