William Simmonds: The Silent Heart of the Arts and Crafts Movement

by Jessica Douglas-Home

Overview

This book uncovers the work of sculptor William Simmonds, one of the forgotten originals of the Arts and Crafts movement. Inspired by his pastoral surroundings in the Cotswolds, he played a particularly vital role in the movement between the two world wars. After the First World War Simmonds emerged as a master of woodcarving, known for his exquisite oak, pine, ebony and ivory carvings of wild and domestic creatures. He earned his living by making puppets and became Europe's most renowned puppet master. His wife Eve, a well-known embroiderer in her own right, made the puppets' costumes and accompanied the puppet shows on the spinet, playing early music discovered by Dolmetsch and pieces by Cecil Sharp and Vaughan Williams.

Simmonds's circle included the artists William Rothenstein, Edwin Abbey, John Singer Sargent and E.H. Shepard; architects Ernest Gimson, Detmar Blow, and the Barnsley brothers; potters and stained-glass artists Alfred and Louise Powell and Edward Payne; and textile printers Barron and Larcher. Poets Tagore, W.H. Davies, John Masefield and John Drinkwater; writers Max Beerbohm and D.H. Lawrence; and the musicians Lionel Tertis and Violet Gordon Woodhouse with her 'four husbands' all played their part. This book documents that lost world and adds another dimension to the story of the extraordinary Violet Gordon-Wodehouse, who lived at Nether Lypiatt Manor a mile from Simmonds's cottage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781912690107
Publisher:	Unicorn
Publication date:	09/03/2018
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	350
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Jessica Douglas-Home trained at Chelsea School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art as a painter, etcher and theatre designer. She has had one-man shows in London, Washington and Brussels, and has also designed productions for the National Theatre and other West End theatres. Her first book, The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse, the acclaimed biography of the musician Violet Gordon Woodhouse, appeared in 1996 and was nominated for a Whitbread prize. This, her fourth book, is on some ways a sequel, adding a new dimension to our understanding of the Arts & Crafts movement. Jessica Douglas-Home is also the author of A Glimpse of Empire and Once Upon Another Time, a book about her travels behind the Iron Curtain. She has written for The Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, Standpoint, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement and The New Criterion.

Table of Contents

Prologue 3

1 Beginnings 1876-1892 8

2 National Art Training School 1893-1898 16

3 Royal Academy Schools 1899 28

4 Upper Schools 1900-1904 37

5 The Genius of Edwin Abbey 1904-1905 46

6 Signs of Expulsion and Emigration 1906-1907 56

7 All-Powerful 'Summer Exhibition' 1907-1911 63

8 Eve Simmonds 1910-1912 71

9 Secret War Work 1914-1915 83

10 Sculpting Becomes the Consuming Passion 1915-1916 96

11 War Work for De Havilland 1917-1918 110

12 When the Fighting Stops 1918 122

13 Call of the Cotswolds 1918-1919 133

14 New Theatre Director for Oakridge 1919-1921 144

15 Annus mirabilis 1921 152

16 Second Annus mirabilis 1922 159

17 Professors on the Road 1922-1923 170

18 Puppets Claim Centre Stage 1923-1925 181

19 Wilkinsons, Simmondses, D.H. Lawrence 1926 191

20 Enter Violet Gordon Woodhouse 1927-1925 205

21 William, Violet and Rothenstein 1929-1933 221

22 Detmar Blow Destroyed 1934-1939 234

23 Initial years of the Second World War 1939-1941 243

24 Latter Years of the Second World War 1941-1945 251

25 William's Final Years 1945-1968 260

Postscript 268

Notes 270

Select Bibliography 272

Acknowledgments 274

Index 276

Editorial Reviews

"Simmonds emerges as an enthralling figure . . . . [T]he level and variety of documentation is a biographer’s dream. Jessica Douglas-Home makes full use of it, in elegant prose. We can follow his life, friendships, marriage, and artistic career in thrilling detail. . . . As a tribute to an unusual and gifted man, this book may have had a long gestation, but it’s as much a masterpiece as the puppets."

New Criterion

"The intertwining of nature, art, and small, delicately made people is the focus of this biography. . . . Through Simmonds’s biography, we gain a better understanding of the systems of art teaching in fin-de-siècle Britain. And we can see more clearly the afterlives of pioneering Victorian artists."

Church Times

"Douglas-Home’s fascinating new biography of this elusive figure. . . . offers a marvellous wealth of detail, taking in Eve and William’s background and social circle, William’s unexpected war work, their startlingly catholic range of friendships and William’s extraordinary successes in the 1920s and 1930s. . . . She writes lyrically of the landscape and atmosphere of the Golden Valley of Gloucestershire. . . . William Simmonds is an impressive achievement."

Literary Review

"Douglas-Home takes care to describe accurately places, people and events of Simmonds life, weaving a rich tapestry of Edwardian and early Twentieth Century life in England. Her touch is light and the book is a pleasure to read. . . . This biography is a wide-ranging, intelligent and fair assessment of the life and work of a much-respected English sculptor. Let us hope that this raises Simmonds's profile with the general public."

Alexander Adams Art

"Jessica Douglas-Home's claim that [William Simmonds] is 'forgotten' is broadly true, since his name is rarely mentioned in the extensive literature on the Arts and Crafts movement published since [his death]. Now, using letters and diaries, she has vividly revealed his life story (and Eve's, too) in all its artistic, social and ideological detail."

The Art Newspapaer

"It can be difficult - even dishonest - to present a single figure as central to an artistic era. But in this book, Jessica Douglas-Home accomplishes the task convincingly. The Arts and Crafts movement, born in Britain, flourished around the turn of the 20th century and placed renewed emphasis on traditional craftsmanship in the decorative arts; in William Simmonds, it had an unassuming but essential participant. . . . Douglas-Home presents Simmonds’ complicated biography, from his schooling at the National Art Training School (now the Royal College of Art in London) to his friendships with luminaries such as painter John Singer Sargent and writer D.H. Lawrence. She also lays out a strong case that, though Simmonds wasn’t the most famous artist of his era, he nevertheless was its paragon."

American Craft