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Dresser was born in the same year as William Morris.
However, while Morris has enjoyed extensive and continuing historical
and critical coverage since his lifetime, Dresser has been given
little detailed attention, only being mentioned briefly in general
histories of design. Astonishingly, the first monograph on Dresser
did not appear until 1990. Hitherto the paucity of Dresser scholarship
has tended to distort the true scale and nature of his achievement,
on the one hand ignoring the immense variety of his output, and
on the other portraying him as an inexplicable visionary.
This exhibition, accompanied by the publication of
a magnificent monograph edited by Michael Whiteway, provides an
unprecedented opportunity to see Dresser in perspective and evaluate
the scale of his achievement.
Given what we now know about his extensive talents,
Dresser would have had at least three career paths open to him:
artist, botanist and designer. His energy and sensibilities would
have equipped him as a successful artist, and certainly a more significant
artist than many of the hacks who stocked the Royal Academy of his
day. However, his early entry aged 13 into the Government School
of Design precluded this possibility. Its students were expressly
forbidden to study the human form, which in Victorian times was
the essential prerequisite to recognition as an artist.
Dresser became a botanist of the first rank in his
twenties, being awarded a doctorate at the age of 25 by the University
of Jena on the basis of his publications, and later standing as
a credible candidate for the Chair of Botany at University College
London. Although he was not appointed, Dresser continued to enjoy
respect and honours at the highest academic level, researching,
publishing and lecturing widely.
With the two professional avenues of art and botany
closed to him, Dresser poured his considerable energies into designing
for the burgeoning mass-production industries of his day. The penetrating
research he might otherwise have devoted to botany, he committed
instead to a thorough understanding of function, materials and production
processes. The profound sensibilities that he might otherwise have
devoted to art, he lavished upon the creation of ingenious and dynamic
surface design for all kinds of artefacts.
Dresser designed for numerous manufacturers and almost
every kind of artefact in production including textiles, wallpaper,
tableware, ceramics and furniture. Stylistically, his work falls
into three broad categories. First, there are the ornamental surface
designs, often based upon botanical forms. Although distinctly 'period'
in character, they still radiate the energy and sensitivity of their
creator. Secondly, there is a class of functional objects, principally
in ceramic and metal, which reflect two potentially conflicting
design trends: on the one hand a kind of 'metal-bashing' Medievalism
with scalloped edges and prominent rivets, and on the other a Japanese-inspired
Minimalism. Dresser's visit to Japan in 1876/7 proved to be a life-transforming
experience for him and led him to rethink almost every aspect of
his practice and design philosophy.
The third category of his output comprises a group
of designs in metal and glass for tableware and utensils, which
he produced in the late 1870s and 1880s. What is so astonishing
about these designs is that they are almost entirely without any
kind of ornamentation except for the occasional gesture in that
direction. The then novel technique of electroplating lends an astonishing
modernity to many of his designs which, to revert to my opening
observation, might lead even the experienced eye to place them 50
or perhaps 100 years later.
One can see in these works the quest for purity of
form and the elimination of irrelevant detail, which preoccupied
so many of the design movements that followed Dresser. The highly
reflective electroplated surfaces combined with glass imparts an
almost ethereal quality, permitting objects to hover delicately
in space. While most of these remarkable designs produce items that
invite handling and use, a small number move so far in the direction
of minimalist purity of form that one feels a slight degree of uneasiness
that perhaps the quest for geometric purity is taking a path away
from practicality and function. One can detect the beginnings of
a geometric puritanism which, taken to extremes, in later designers
culminated in a kind of Bang and Olufsen inscrutability.
By 1879 Dresser was a highly successful designer,
in terms of both financial rewards and critical acclaim. In that
year he formed with Charles Holme [Holme would later (in 1893) found
the Studio magazine] the company Dresser and Holme, dedicated
to the import of Japanese artefacts. However, in the 1880s manufacturing
and trade was overtaken by a massive recession. Dresser, with a
large family and extensive business commitments, was forced to retrench
dramatically. Although he continued to design up until his death
in 1904, he never regained the level of commercial success and professional
recognition that he had enjoyed in his heyday before 1880. He became
increasingly marginalised, even in those areas of expertise in which
he had blazed a trail.
This exhibition, combined with the monograph, is essential
viewing and reading, not only for those involved in the history
of design, but anyone with an interest in 19th century culture.
It graphically exposes so many of the paradoxes and contradictions
that pervaded the world of the Victorians: the conflict between
ornament and function, the hierarchical structure of professions,
the dialogue between the indigenous and the exotic, and the often
heroic struggle of individuals to be true to themselves while entering
into a pact with society.
Clive Ashwin
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