arts & crafts issue || john houghton maurice bonnor (1875-1917): a little known designer of the...

The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the Present

John Houghton Maurice Bonnor (1875-1917): A little known designer of the Arts and CraftsMovementAuthor(s): Muriel WilsonSource: The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850 - the Present, No. 28, ARTS &CRAFTS ISSUE (2004), pp. 108-125Published by: The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the PresentStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41809352 .

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John Houghton Maurice

Bonnor (1875-1917)

A little known designer of the Arts and Crafts Movement

Muriel Wilson

The glancing

and ample Crafts

references

portmanteau Movement

to bulges

of

its

the

minor with Arts

and Crafts Movement bulges with

glancing references to its minor

figures: assistants, pupils, specialist craftsmen called in to help with a major work by a master and subsequently building a modest reputation; flickering luminaries of the Art Workers Guild recorded for their loyal service on a committee or panel; eager young lady amateurs, the 'Miss

Emilys' who so riled C. R. Ashbee, and so on.

John Bonnor is one of these shadowy figures, consigned to an occasional inaccurate footnote in the larger scheme of things. All that was ever

published about him is an obituary in The Studio 1 written three years after his death, at the urging of his widow, by his friend the wood craftsman Romney Green. Much of Greens text is taken from her prompting letter to him.

Study of a substantial collection of material

presented to the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff in 1981 by John Bonnor s daughters has made it possible to recover the life and work of a typical artist-craftsman of the beginning of the twentieth century. John Bonnor worked in a versatile range of media, drawing stylistically on the mediaevalism of the Morris and Burne-

Jones circle and the mysticism of W R Lethaby. He was evidently respected within the group of architects and craftsmen of the last stages of the Arts and Crafts Movement. This essay will

emphasize the value of a unique archive not

only in the reconstruction of the work of a little- known designer but in providing an insight into his life as a contributor to the decorative arts scene of his day. The archive contains an

extraordinary range of material, from exquisite

presentation drawings to rough sketches, full size cartoons for stained glass, receipts from

suppliers, letter books of correspondence with

clients, architects and fellow artist-designers and with his estate manager in North Wales. There are also teaching notes, family letters, and a

postcard from his small daughter on a seaside

holiday. Perhaps most rewarding of all are the nineteen pocket notebooks containing ideas for

commissions, shopping lists, caricatures of

friends, phone numbers, philosophical musings, and metallurgical formulae. Added to these is a poignant collection of bench tools, dies and

punches, wax models and samples of enamel and stained glass. From this bewildering jigsaw it has been possible to build up almost a day to

day account of John Bonnor's all too brief life and work.

Bonnor trained as an architectural

draughtsman and around 1900 joined the Architectural Department of the LCC. In 1904 he followed Henry Wilsons classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts and formed a

lifelong friendship with Wilson. The following year he was employed by the Artificers' Guild as head of its metal workshop, and set up independently in 1908, producing metal work, jewellery, stained glass, mosaic and sculpture. A commission in 1910 for a window in Norman Shaw's St Michael and all Angels church in Bedford Park led to similar work, and to a close

professional association with the leading architect P Morley Horder, for whom Bonnor

provided church furnishings, windows and interior fittings, including stonecarving. Bonnor

taught jewellery and metal work at Camber well

FIG. 1 Design for a ciborium for St Margaret's Church, Oxford, dated 1910, ink and gouache. National Museums & Galleries of Wales

JOHN HOUGHTON MAURICE BONNOR (1875 - I917) IO9



FIG. 2 Design for decorative page heading, Fashions and Fancies , c. 1900, ink. National Museums & Galleries of Wales

FIG. 3 Design for a 'Wrot Iron Grille', C.1902, ink and wash. National Museums & Galleries of Wales.

V Art College from 1909 to 1915, ' and enamelling at the Central / School from 1916. In the summer

of 1916 he was invited to work on the rebuilding of the Canadian Houses

of Parliament in Ottawa, but died in Canada the following January.

Although John Bonnor's birth was

registered at Tewkesbury, as 16 September 1875, the family home was Bryn-y-Gwalia, in

Llangedwyn, Denbighshire, where they could be

described as minor gentry. His paternal grandfather had been Dean of St Asaph from 1859 to 18862- His father George Hawkins Bonnor married in 1873 Diana Houghton Brancker, whose family was based on the Wirral, and John was the second of their four children.^ The families were close, and plenty of letters and

holiday postcards survive from aunts and cousins.

John was educated in Rhyl, probably at Colet House, set up in 1888 by a cousin. His older sister Rose (1874-1967) lived in London after her schooling at Cheltenham Ladies

College, studying at Clapham Art School, and at some point in the 1890s John arrived to join her at Rossetti Gardens Mansions, one of the

many studio complexes then common in Chelsea and elsewhere in London.4 Rose became a successful portrait painter and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1901. The archive contains a number of chalk life and costume studies presumed to be by her,

although some of these are signed by John, who

may also have attended the Clapham School5.

Equally some of the early sketchbooks are

impossible to attribute either to Rose or to John. Some have one of their liames on the front

cover, with the other on the back. Their contents range over sketches of family members, watercolour landscapes, plant and animal studies, and notes for all kinds of decorative art. Many of these, and the loose

drawings in folders, are for handbills, shop or café advertisements, letter headings, and

vignettes for magazines, and clearly brother and sister borrowed each other s book at will. The

graphic designs, for lettering, figures of pierrots

IIO THE DECORATIVE ARTS SOCIETY JOURNAL 2OO4



and elegant ladies, are competent, stylish and

strongly influenced by fashionable magazine and commercial design of the day (Fig. 2). Many of the drawings from this period show the same awareness of advanced decorative design, with close links to the graphic styles of Mackintosh,

Voysey and other architects and designers whose work would have been familiar through architectural journals (Fig. 3).

John was articled as a draughtsman with the architectural firm of Young and Hall in

Southampton Street, off the Strand.6 A scribbled note by his widow on a copy of the obituary claims that he 'entered at 15 because his drawing was so good', and John may then have been

living at his mothers house in East Sheen Avenue. Of John Bonnor's work with Young and Hall the only surviving evidence in the archive is an offprint of a published perspective drawing, possibly from Building News , of the Parish Room for Christ Church and St Saviour in Ealing. This is dated 1901 and although it is not signed by Bonnor, the decorative border and

calligraphy correspond closely to the material in the sketchbooks and it is probable that he kept it because he had drawn it.

A two-week cycling tour in early September 1901 to Tintern Abbey and Chepstow may well have filled the break between Bonnors leaving Young and Hall and starting with the LCC. His diary of the trip, annotated with notes of expenses and complaints about the

rain, takes up much of the thick sketchbook in which he made watercolours and chalk

drawings of the Abbey and the castlfe, the style reminiscent of late nineteenth century book

illustration, showing Bonnor alert to recent

graphic trends. The Pooterish narrative is enlivened by Bonnor's exasperation at the mechanical vagaries of the bicycle, his dismay at having forgotten to bring cascara, and his excitement at eavesdropping on the conversations of two pretty lady cyclists through the bedroom walls of his lodgings in Tintern.

Around 1901 he began work in the

recently established Architects Department of the London County Council. It is tempting to

imagine him at work on the pioneering housing developments of the first years of the century, undertaken to replace slum clearance in Shoreditch and Millbank. Some of the scraps of

philosophical observations in Bonnor's notebooks show a concern with the dis-

advantaged, reflecting the idealistic zeal for social reform characteristic of the Department, but no direct reference to his work there remains in the archive. LCC records do not survive from the period, so that it is unclear if he was still in the department while attending evening classes at the Central School. In November 1903 his friend R. T. Rigby writes about his own redundancy from the 'Office of

Works', asking Bonnor if it is worth 'applying to the Council in the branch you left'.

Robert Bicknell, a friend of the Bonnor

family, had bought Old Place, Stanmore around

1901, after the railway turned the hitherto isolated village into a commuter dormitory affording healthy suburban homes for families. Bicknell worked in Whitehall for the Local Government Board and Old Place was a substantial early nineteenth century house with

JOHN HOUGHTON MAURICE BONNOR (1875 - I917) III



FIG. 4 Design for a newel post at Old Place, Stanmore, dated 1904, coloured chalks. National Museums & Galleries of Wales

a large garden, set on Stanmore Hill with a

panoramic view over north London. Bicknells letter to Bonnor on 4 July 1904 proposes alterations to the interior, creating a new dining room with a French window, and modifications to the staircase and fireplace to create a fashionable inglenook. A local builder was

contracted, and planning permission from Hendon RDC was granted by the end of July. Plans, technical drawings and watercolour

perspectives signed by John HM Bonnor, Architect, and voluminous correspondence between client, architect and builder survives. Bonnor was for the first time coping with

specifications, estimates, variation orders, delivery delays, setbacks such as the shrinkage of the newly laid floor ('It will have to come

up'), and later the choice of wallpaper, curtain fabric and lighting. The massive Keswick slate

fireplace was framed in timber worked in the School of Woodcarving at the Royal College, under the direction of George Jack, and the newel post of the «new staircase was crowned by the carving of a snipe, for which a drawing (Fig. 4)

appears in a sketchbook dated '20.9.04' and annotated 'Snipe on nest amid rushes

supporting the blue vault spangled of stars', the

language of which recalls that of W. R.

Lethaby's Architecture, Mysticism & Myth (1891). Bonnor worked again at Old Place in 1906, putting in the French window and steps into the

garden, but although his practical experience in Stanmore will have stood him in good stead for his later work in church furnishings and

decorations, he was never again directly responsible for supervising building work.

Throughout his career Bonnor maintained

friendships and professional relationships with

many of the architects well known in the early years of last century, and was clearly recommended from one to the other.

In late 1904 while presumably still

working at the LCC Bonnor enrolled for

evening classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, then at 316 Regent Street and like other London art colleges the responsibility of the LCC. Courses at this time were primarily for the training of apprentices, but inevitably many of the students were young women, and it is likely that Bonnor met his future wife

Nancy Agar there. His tutor was Henry Wilson, who seems to have become a mentor to the younger man. A letter from Wilson in

February 1905 seems to be the response to a

request for advice: in it he counsels his pupil to think carefully before leaving a salaried job for the uncertainties of life as an independent craftsman. He evidently thought highly of Bonnor and employed him privately as a

draughtsman in early 1905, although the nature

112 THE DECORATIVE ARTS SOCIETY JOURNAL 2OO4



of the work is not clear. Much later, when Wilson organized the Arts and Crafts exhibition at Burlington House in 1916, he invited John Bonnor to design zodiac motifs for the panels of a set of doors to the Hall of Heroes. It is unlikely, however that these were

completed before Bonnor left for Canada in

September, and a photograph shows them half finished. It is not clear if in the end the doors formed part of the installation.^

It was as a result of Bonnors debut at the end of year Art Schools exhibition in a building between the Albert Hall and the Imperial Institute that he first attracted attention. The exhibition was reviewed in great detail in the Art Journal^ and Bonnors work - a massive

pendant entitled The New Jerusalem (Fig. 5) was singled out for special mention:

'Mr Bonnor s remarkable pendant with its silver battlements encrusting the blue of the

turquoise and the grey gleams of the

moonstone, wrought with a finish that is

throughout the clear and careful expression of the designers delight in the ornamental and symbolic uses of the material,

Another, unidentified, cutting preserved in the archive has the following praise:

'Jewellery and enamels have not always been a strong feature of the Regent Street

School, and to come at once upon the showcase filled chiefly with the really beautiful work by THM Bonnor (sic) was a

delightful surprise. His chef d'oeuvre was a

jewelled pendant - probably intended to show 'The new Jerusalem' shewing a castle in silver with jewelled gates, standing on a blue enamelled base, suggesting 'the waters under the earth', while behind the turrets loomed a wonderful sky represented by a

large moonstone, the use of which in such a

way was a genuine inspiration. We understand Mr Bonnor was a pupil of

Henry Wilson. In his new classes at the

Royal College of Art may Mr Wilson find

many a pupil as promising, say we.'

As always at graduate exhibitions there were talent scouts on the lookout, and on 2 August 1905 Edward Spencer, Director of the Artificers' Guild,9 writes to Bonnor suggesting a meeting, with a view to his joining the Guild as a jewellery designer-maker. Bonnor saw the

opportunity of joining a busy workshop and

developing his technical skills alongside traditionally trained craftsmen, broadening his

experience in other craft areas such as

silversmithing. He worked there until 1908. In

FIG. 5 Pendant, ' The New Jerusalem from 'Art Journal', July 1905, silver, moonstone, enamel. National Museums & Galleries of Wales

JOHN HOUGHTON MAURICE BONNOR (1875 - I917) II3



FIG. 6 (above left) Design for a necklace, Ariadne , 1905, ink and gouache. National Museums & Galleries of Wales.

FIG. 7 ( above right) Design for a pendant, Una and the Lion , pencil, with part of piece as executed, converted to a brooch, c.1907, silver, gold-plated, cabochons and enamel. David Newell-Smith

the collection of drawings from the Artificers' Guild at Goldsmiths Hall in London there are some forty designs signed by or stylistically attributable to John Bonnor, demonstrating his skill as a designer of jewellery and decorative

metalwork, especially in the use of coloured stones and complex detail. Several executed

pieces have been traced. These reveal

something of the techniques used and the recurrence of favourite decorative motifs such as the zodiac roundels, stars, shells, and tiny dragon castings, the dies and punches for which survive in the collection of workshop material in Cardiff. The notebooks contain quantities of notes on metallurgical formulae, technical

processes and the symbolism of gemstones, indicating that Bonnor was continuing to

develop his technical experience. One of the most important pieces of

jewellery designed and made jointly by Spencer

and Bonnor was the 'Ariadne' necklace of 1905

(Fig. 6), now in Birmingham.10 A reviewer of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society exhibition in which the necklace was shown

gave a fulsome interpretation of each element of the design, stressing 'the significance of the

mystery reflected in the myth of Ariadne and Bacchus through beautiful forms'. The necklace

reappeared in the 1916 exhibition at Burlington House, where the catalogue describes it as

designed by J Bonnor, lent by Mrs Leaf, the wife of Harold Leaf whose chain of office as Mayor of Marlborough was made by the Guild in 1906. This piece is typical of the 'narrative' element of Arts and Crafts jewellery, found also in work

by Wilson, and John Paul Cooper, both of whom sold work through the Guild's showroom. It consists of a complex central section with a pendent female figure - the abandoned Ariadne - in a vine-garlanded niche

II4 THE DECORATIVE ARTS SOCIETY JOURNAL 2OO4



(an allusion to her rescue by Bacchus) and an elaborate chain in which the links are Theseus'

disappearing fleet of Argonaut ships. Unusually for Arts and Crafts jewellery, several diamonds are incorporated into the design, along with a star form in gold wire, possibly a recycling of the client's own jewellery. Many similar

mythological, allegorical and some Arthurian

subjects appear in the drawings from the Guild and in the intricate pieces created later by Bonnor and his wife working as independent craftsmen. The complexity of the Ariadne

design, for which there are drawings in the Bonnor archive, and that of other Guild pieces, makes at times for a fussy and congested effect. This is true of the original design for the

pendant Una and the Lion from Spenser's ' Faery

Queene (Fig. 7) and the design for an Andromeda pendant, which has close links with a pendant attributed to Henry Wilson now in the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, which

incorporates a casting of the dragon motif from Bonnor 's workshop stock.

After this success John Bonnor's career

developed rapidly, with sponsorship from

Spencer for his application in 1906 (to Karl

Parsons) for membership of the Junior Art Workers' Guild, invitations to exhibit, applications for tuition, commissions for

jewellery, and mentions, alongside references to 'Mr Spencer, Mr Fisher and Mr Cooper', in reviews of exhibitions by the International

Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers. There were private commissions as well as those for the Guild, and the archive contains scores of jewellery designs, some of them

exquisite drawings for clients, others simply preliminary ideas quickly sketched in the notebooks or on scraps of paper. Much of the work was done in collaboration with Nancy Agar, at first in Trafalgar Studios, Manresa Road and in their workshop in Bayswater after their marriage in 1908. 11 Initially much of the

jewellery and small silversmithing work seems to have been for family members - the archive contains many letters from ecstatic aunts

delighted with the new pendant or teaspoons, or a cousin 'awfully pleased with the tophole fingerbowls'. Contrary to Henrý Wilson's

warning, plenty of work came to the workshop, and Bonnor built up a clientele, probably through links with the Artificers Guild (for which he seems to have continued working on a freelance basis) for a steady production of metalwork. There remain quantities of receipts and invoices for materials, tools and stones, from well-known suppliers, some of whom are still in business. Commissions for jewellery and other metalwork continued through the rest of his life, although in 1914 he told an enquirer that his wife is now responsible for the jewellery side of the business. Even so, there is a signed drawing for a ring and earrings dated as late as

April 1916. One of John Bonnor's more fully documented commissions was a necklace ordered in late 1912 by the architect J. E. Bownass for a Miss Green. Bownass was

leaving for Canada in the New Year, and was anxious to see the finished piece before he embarked. He reappears as a colleague of Bonnor in 1916 in the work for the Ottawa Houses of Parliament. In the extensive

JOHN HOUGHTON MAURICE BONNOR (1875 - I917) II5



FIG. 8 Design for a necklace for Miss Green, 1912, pencil and gouache, gold paìnt. National Museums & Galleries of Wales

correspondence it becomes clear that Bonnor was to re-use a quantity of rubies from two Indian bracelets belonging to Miss Green, and

drawings survive for alternative designs for the necklace (Fig. 8). Miss Green makes her choice and supplies a length of string (still pinned to her letter) representing 'the exact measurement of my neck', but after taking delivery of the finished piece she decides it is after all a little too long. It is altered and she writes to say the necklace is attracting many compliments and encloses her cheque for 15gns.

In 1909 John Bonnor was commissioned,

possibly through Edward Waring, a partner in the Artificers' Guild, to design the East Window for a new chapel added by Maurice B. Adams to Norman Shaw's St Michael and All Angels in Bedford Park (Fig. 9). Bonnor later claimed this

was his first attempt at making stained glass, and that he had taught himself by reference to

Christopher Whall's handbook.12 The commission is unexpected, since Bonnor had at the time no evident experience in stained glass work, but drawings for windows from as early as 1903 exist in the archive, including one signed by him and dated 1907 for a three light window in the Presbyterian (now URC) church at

Egremont on the Wirral. Above the figures of

Moses, Solomon and St John the Evangelist is

tracery with sun, moon and stars, motifs that recur in many of Bonnor s later window designs. The church records state that the window was

designed by the Artificers Guild, 'a company of artists banded together, not for pecuniary profit but for their love of art' (the Guild was of course a successful commercial enterprize with a staff of trained metalworkers). It was commissioned from the Guild by the artist D. Y. Cameron in

memory of his father, Rev. Robert Cameron, who had founded the church. This is the only evidence yet traced of stained glass by the Guild, which had made silverware for D.Y. Cameron. Its scale and the professional quality of its execution imply that the window would have been made by a firm such as Wainwright and

Waring. There is no evidence that Bonnor 's other

early window designs were carried out. The window at St Michael's, for which the subject is the Ascension, with a Noli me Tangere below, and two separate small windows with saints, are carried out in richly saturated colours, heavily influenced by Whall's work, and attracted immediate attention leading in turn to more such

commissions, so that stained glass became one of

n6 THE DECORATIVE ARTS SOCIETY JOURNAL 2OO4



FIG. 9 East Window, Chapel of All Souls, St Michael and All Angels, Bedford Park, 1910.

FIG. 10 Detail of chapel window, St Bee's School, Cumbria, 1913. Bill Waters

the principal activities of the Bonnor workshop. The St Michael's window was installed by Wainwright and Waring (Waring was a

churchwarden), and in 1910 Bonnor was sub- contracted by them to supply some armorial glass in the Hall of Balliol College, Oxford. During the next five years he worked closely with the firm on a number of projects. One project which survives in situ is in the School chapel at St Bees, Cumbria, a memorial to a distinguished old boy, Henry Fox, carried out in 1913. The subject is the Annunciation to the Shepherds (Fig. 10).

On 18 December 1914 John Bonnor wrote to the Bishop of Rockhampton, Australia, in

response to the Bishop's proposal for a large window in the church of St Matthew in

Hastings, New Zealand. The Bishop had wandered into St Michael's in Bedford Park

while waiting with a friend for a train. The friend wrote '. . . it was I who with the Bishop fell in love with your window at Turnham Green - the one and only window that so far has satisfied that inexpressible feeling after

something. We both exclaimed "That's the

Thing'". Bonnor's characteristically diffident

reply stresses his lack of experience, and

usefully lists his various achievements, in glass and metalwork, to that date. The church in New Zealand had been recently rebuilt, and is described by the Colchester-based vicar who acted as intermediary on the project as 'that hideous ferro-concrete affair'. Two memorial windows had been commissioned by a local

family, and while Bonnor designed the main East Window, that in the Lady Chapel was commissioned from his AWG associate, Karl

JOHN HOUGHTON MAURICE BONNOR (1875 - I 9 I 7) II7



Parsons. Negotiations continued through 1915 and Bonnor was still working on the window, his most ambitious stained glass project, when he left for Canada. After his death it was

completed and despatched to Hastings by his

widow, who subsequently used a variant of the St Bees design for a window in the nearby church in Te Aute, Pukehou.

Many of the designs for stained glass in the Bonnor archive remain difficult to identify. A few photographs of completed windows

remain, but these and the surviving drawings (some signed by Nancy Bonnor) are only rarely titled or annotated. Exchanges of letters with

Wainwright and Waring and other contractors are evidence of a considerable amount of stained

glass work by the workshop, but the notes in the

correspondence - 'the figured window' . . . 'the 4ft square window' ... 'the heraldic panels', make it difficult to identify locations or to relate documentation to the surviving drawings. Many of the windows in London churches or commercial premises and charitable institutions were victims of the Blitz (although three tiny apostles are still perched high up in the tower of Penge Congregationalist church), and may never have been recorded or photographed. Most frustrating of all are the numerous rolled

up full- scale cartoons. These are on the oiled

paper used then as tracing paper, which with

age becomes too brittle to unfold or flatten without it crumbling into fragments. These

precious clues to the identification of work by a

busy stained glass workshop will remain inaccessible until conservation science can offer a solution.

Building on the technical experience he had gained in the Artificers Guild workshop, Bonnor developed skills in designing and

making small metalwork items such as domestic and desk accessories - napkin rings, salt cellars, spoons, a matchbox holder with

applied brass flames (Fig. 11), copper bowls. The Guild produced quantities of these and

surviving pieces by Bonnor owe much to the Guild's house style. Two important pieces of

plate however show a distinctive character. In late 1910 he made a ciborium for St Margaret's church in Oxford, commissioned in memory of its architect, H.W. Drinkwater, who died in 1895. 13 A presentation drawing (Fig. 1) survives in the archive, and the finished piece was executed almost exactly as in the drawing (Fig. 12). It is an extremely complex affair in chased and repoussé silver-gilt, with enamel, pearls and cabochons, surmounted by an elaborate cover incorporating a Madonna and Child enthroned (for which wax models

survive), set within gothic arcading and crystal fountains. While drawing on the styles of northern European late Gothic and- early Renaissance metalwork, the piece is close in

feeling to the work of Henry Wilson. Many of the small plaques and stampings of crosses, shells, leaves and other decorative details in the interior as well as the exterior of the piece can be traced in the collection of punches and dies

remaining among the tools from the workshop. The drawing carries a detailed inscription of the significance and symbolism of each element of the design. On the rim of the bowl is the

inscription: ECCE PAÑIS ANGELICORUM

Il8 THE DECORATIVE ARTS SOCIETY JOURNAL 2OO4



FACTUS CIBIS VIATICUM. On the underside of the base is a cabochon crystal over

peacock blue foil, and the inscription:

Ad Maiorum Dei Gloriam in usum ad Altare Ecclesiae Sanctae Margaritae, virg. Et mart: apud Oxoniam. In Memorium Harrici G W Drinkwater Architecti, quae in Christo obdormovit a.d.iii Id Oct: MDCCCXCV: Cuius animae proprietur ÛEUS.

Among the papers in the archive are letters dated in November and December 1910 between the designer and his father regarding the correct wording of the inscriptions.

Whilst working on the ciborium during the autumn of 1910, Bonnor received a commission through the architect Percy Morley Horder, who had admired the window in Bedford Park, and who was to become his chief

patron during the next five years.14 Sir Alfred

Apperley, a relation of Mrs Morley Horder, was one of the principal employers around Stroud in Gloucestershire. His family had owned a

prosperous woollen mill' there since the early nineteenth Century. The commission was for a casket for presentation to Countess Bathurst (of nearby Cirencester Park), who had been invited to open the newly built weaving shed at

Dudbridge Mill (Fig. 13).^ The design of the little casket was carefully planned as a traditional gabled reliquary form surmounted

by an arching bar on which stands a stocky Goddess of Weaving clutching her distaff and flanked by the thistle heads used for carding wool. Tiny sheep support shields with the arms

of the Ancient Company of Weavers, and of the Bathurst family, and Sir Alfred's initials feature

prominently. The casket opens to reveal another sheep poised on a large crystal shuttle bound with gold wire representing thread, forming the grip of the plug with which her

Ladyship would switch on the electric power in the new shed. Several of Bonnor's notebooks contain sketches of details and scribbled notes, such as 'a temple or shrine . . . containing the link or Key by which the forces of nature are

brought together in union with human

intelligence that the rites and mysteries of

spinning and weaving may be practised and a web be woven wherein the naked may be clothed'. Originally to be made in gold, the casket is silver plated with the plug gilded. It is lined with cloth with which the mill had won a

gold medal at the 1851 Great Exhibition.

FIG. 11 Design for a matchbox holder, undated, Pencil. National Museums & Galleries of Wales.

FIG. 12 Detail of ciborium for St Margaret's Church, Oxford, 1910, silver gilt, cabochons, enamel. Christ Church Cathedral Treasury, Oxford

JOHN HOUGHTON MAURICE BONNOR (1875 - I 9 I 7) II9



The day of the Opening, 7 November

1910, was a festive occasion, with invitations to local worthies, special Press trains from

London, serried ranks of employees (some of whom were presented with long-service medals

designed by John Bonnor), formidable

headgear and a garlanded platform for the

guests of honour. The local paper carried near verbatim transcripts of the speeches and

impressive photographs of the assembled

company and of the casket.16 Lord Bathurst

proudly announced that he was wearing a suit of 'Hydea' wool, a speciality product of

Dudbridge Mill. His wife then withdrew the electric plug from inside the casket and thrust it into the socket in front of her, whereupon, according to the newspaper account, 'wheels

began slowly to revolve, and the huge shed was

soon filled with the noise of humming machinery'.

A few other pieces in silver and other metals by John Bonnor have been traced, such as the chalice for St Alban s church near Barons

Court, but since he never registered a hallmark other plate may survive unrecognized in unattributed Arts and Crafts metalwork . The use of medallions with Evangelist and zodiac

motifs, and of the small decorative details from the workshop punches, is a clue in the ongoing search.

By 1913 Morley Horder was increasingly involved with decorative work for the rapidly expanding chain of Boots the Chemist.1^ His

correspondence with Bonnor, usually hurried notes and near-illegible scribbles, (almost, 'I'm on the train', in one case) reveal that Bonnor was

indispensable to him as an all-purpose designer. From 1911 there is a diagram of a mobile pulpit for Brondesbury Congregational Church, three stained glass panels for Penge, and a wrought iron gate for Apperley's house near Stroud. There are references to hymnboards for Ealing in 1912 and advertisement boards for the Tabard Inn in Bedford Park. In 1913 Bonnor

designs three electroliers for Cheshunt College, Cambridge (a Congregational foundation) and a silver trowel for the Bishop of Kensington to use in laying the foundation stone of Christchurch Church Hall on Turnham Green. The following year he worked on stained glass for Bromley church and on noticeboards for alterations to Waterhouse's Kings Weigh House church on Duke Street. There were windows for Messrs Patterson and Simms at 'London

FIG. 13 Presentation cas'et, for Dudbridge Mill, parcel-gilt, 1910. Museum in the Par', Stroud, Glos Stroud District Museum Trustees




FIG. 14 ( above left) Mausoleum for Sir Alfred Apperley , designed by Morley Horder, tympanum by John Bonnor. 1914.

FIG. 15 ( above right) Inn sign, The Butchers Arms , Sheepscombe, Glos, painted wood, photographer unknown.

House', Crutched Friars and in 1915 Bonnor also worked on a memorial to Sylvester Home MP (father of Kenneth), iri Church Stretton. Horder's work in the Stroud area offered further opportunities such as a mausoleum

(Fig. 14) for Sir Alfred Apperley , who died in

1913, and a carved sign for The Butcher s Arms in Sheepscombe18 (Fig. 15). Between 1913 and 1915 Bonnor was sub-contracted by Horder for work on a cast iron lift cage and windows for the Smoking Room for Boots' in Eastbourne and features for other branches. There is considerable correspondence from July to November 1914 between Bonnor and his

suppliers over technical details, dimensions,

quality of materials, and the like. Imison & Son built the lift cage, estimated at £260,

Wainwright & Waring 'supplied most of the

glass, Carter Paterson broke a lot of it en route from London to Eastbourne, and the building contractors Jones & Andrews fussed about rain

damage to their teak window frames while

waiting for replacement glass. Inevitably, nothing survives today of the work of Horder and Bonnor for Boots, and the firm has no record of their contributions to its history.

Horder provided the opportunity for Bonnor to extend the range of his design skills, and the work must have provided the greater

part of his income over the period 1910 and

1915, which seems to have been the busiest and most prosperous of his career. Work for Horder was supplemented by that for other patrons. Bonnor was continuing to produce jewellery and metalwork for private commissions,

employing around six craftsmen-technicians in the workshop and using specialist outworkers as necessary. He was responsible in 1913 for a window and a wooden Madonna and Child in the Welcome Institute in the Isle of Dogs,19 a

painted apse for St Winifred's Church in Wimbledon in 1914, and there are records of

plans for a mosaic for a Portsmouth church, for which Bonnor sought the help of Harold

Kearley, who was at the time working on the mosaics in Debenham House. At the same time, Bonnor was teaching several days a week.

The couple and their three children moved from Bayswater in 1913, as John became

exasperated by the noise of the District Line in the cutting alongside his house in Moscow Road

(and no doubt the building of Whiteleys close by). He bought Homefield House on Chiswick Mall for £550 from John Thorneycroft, whose father's

shipbuilding yard had been a few hundred yards upstream until 1904. At this time the riverside was a thriving commercial area. A large number of artists and craftsmen, starting with William

JOHN HOUGHTON MAURICE BONNOR (1875 - I 9 I 7) 121



fig. 16 Sketch for figures to decorate model of a cottage designed by Clough Williams Ellis, 1915, pencil. National Museums & Galleries of Wales

Morris and Cobden Sanderson, had since the 1880s made their homes and studios on Chiswick and Hammersmith Malls. The Artificers Guild

workshop was close by in Oil Mill Lane, and Bonnor will have known many of his neighbours professionally. He intended to build a studio-

workshop in the garden (Thorneycroft had obtained planning permission on his behalf), but in the end converted the stables of Oak Cottage, a few doors away, and worked there for most of the remainder of his life. Much later, the same studio was rented by the painter Victor Pasmore.

In 1909 John Bonnor applied for a teaching post at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. Fred Partridge, late of Ashbee's Guild of

Handicraft, had been dismissed as jewellery teacher (although his wife May Hart remained on the staff) and Bonnor was appointed in his

place to teach jewellery and enamelling two full

days and two evenings a week. College records^ show that he remained there, with variations in the teaching days and at a gradual increase in

salary, until his resignation in June 1915. Bonnor had been invited to teach costume life classes at

Clapham Art School in 1905, but no record of this employment has yet been located. He had also been taking private pupils for some years. His strong commitment to teaching is evident both from council minutes at Camberwell, and

papers in the Cardiff archive such as drafts for annual reports, including comments on a favourable report by the external examiner, Alexander Fisher. There is a paper on a proposal on 'the desirability of a practical science class

working alongside of art classes' as a means of mutual advantage and bridging the art/science

gap, a sketch plan for a re-ordering of the metalwork studio and estimates for equipment needed, and its repair, notes on individual students' progress. Documentation in the archive includes notes from the long-suffering School

Secretary, C.H. Johnson, regarding student visits in June 191 1 to the Coronation Exhibition at the White City, several reminders about salary claims ('You forgot to include the Monday evening classes'), notices of staff meetings and other administrative matters. That Bonnor was

regarded as a conscientious and popular teacher is evident from the students' presentation of a book when he left Camberwell. He took up a

post in September 1915 at his old college, the Central School, by then in Southampton Row, to teach jewellery and enamelling, replacing HG

Murphy who had left for war service. Bonnor remained there a year, before his departure for Canada.

Morley Horder had introduced John Bonnor to his Maida Vale neighbour Lawrence

Weaver, who, as the influential contributing editor of Country Life was able to arrange opportunities for work with other architects. In the spring of 1915 Bonnor made the model of a

cottage, with miniature 'family' of inhabitants and a cat, for Clough Williams Ellis, as part of a competitive exhibition of limited cost suburban dwellings that Weaver was

organising. Some correspondence survives,

Clough Williams Ellis's letters written from

army camps in Surrey where he was awaiting a

posting to France. He specifies in detail what is

wanted, including the figures, and asks that

pigeons be pinned to the thatch. The model was




to have internal electric lights. In May he writes in delight after the delivery of the finished

model, enclosing 12gns on account (Fig. 16). In July 1915 Weaver invited Bonnor to

meet Sir George Arthur, private secretary to Lord Kitchener. The Field Marshall was

planning a fountain and groups of statues for the

garden of Broome Park, his house near Dover which was being extended by Detmar Blow. He intended to design the statues himself for Bonnor to carry out, and determined on four

pairs of putti. Work started immediately. The

figures are entirely in the style of Edwardian

garden statuary. Much was made in the press of Kitchener s involvement, and Bonnor writes to Weaver at the end of August how 'K came down here and enjoyed himself immensely, played about with the clay and is really convinced he is doing the things himself.' Telling the story in Country Life a year later,21 Weaver relates how Kitchener 'would motor down to the artist s studio late in the evening after a cabinet meeting . . .' Other press accounts spoke of the opportunity of relief from the stress of the war. Bonnor prepared a drawing for a fountain, but by November Kitchener s enthusiasm was checked by the cost estimate. He told his associates that he could not afford the scheme,

adding coyly that 'You may want to give me

something after this War'. The commission

petered out in December, leaving Bonnor very much out of pocket. He had great difficulty getting compensation from Sir George, and Kitchener died at sea in early June 19 16.22 The

plaster models were exhibited later* that year, presented as by Kitchener with Bonnor taking

a modest second billing, but hoped-for sales of casts never materialized. Ironically, in death notices John Bonnor was mentioned only as the

sculptor of Lord Kitchener s 'War Babies'. The architect George Drysdale, for whom

Bonnor had made a huge rood in his neo-

Romanesque St Joseph's in Alder shot, wrote in

June 1916 from Ottawa, where he was working on the rebuilding of the Canadian Houses of

Parliament, which had been gutted by fire earlier in the year. He invited Bonnor, on behalf of Darling and Pearson, the firm of architects

responsible for the restoration, to join the team as Supervisor of the Sculptural Works. Bonnor 's response was positive, although with a successful and busy studio, a teaching job and

by then four children it is puzzling why he should have decided to go. In 1913 he had inherited Bryn-y-Gwalia, the family manor near Oswestry, from his bachelor uncle

Richard, and rent from farms on its estate would have provided additional income. Yet Bonnor writes to his solicitor 'I am going for the money they offer'. An Atlantic crossing in

FIG. 17 John Bonnor, with his younger son Richard, 1915, photograph. National Museums & Galleries of Wales

JOHN HOUGHTON MAURICE BONNOR (1875 " I9I7) I23



1916 through the U-boat patrols was perhaps a hazardous undertaking. Bonnor seemed determined however and sailed at the end of

October, to begin work straightaway. As a

distinguished English sculptor Bonnor was

highly esteemed in Ottawa and Pearson later wrote warmly of his potential. He was taken

ill, however, in late December and after four weeks in hospital was probably taken to his

younger brother's home in Newark, New

Jersey.25 The exact cause of death *is not

recorded, but he may have underestimated the Canadian winter. Nancy was sent for and arrived the day before Johns death on 30

January. She miscarried their fifth child. After her return, Nancy carried on in

Chiswick as The John Bonnor Studio, completing unfinished work in the hope of

sales, and eventually moving to Bryn-y-Gwalia. She died in 1963, and when her daughters decided to sell the house in 1981 they generously presented what remained of their parents' drawings, correspondence, business papers and tools to the National Museum of Wales.

•Bonnor s career covered a period of seismic

upheavals in all the arts, in taste and social

change. The archive yields little if any evidence of this and reveals Bonnor living in an isolated world of Symbolism and Mediaevalism. There is only a single reference to 'this wretched war', and he seems unaware of the radical artistic

developments then in progress. John Bonnor cannot be claimed as an important innovator in the decorative arts of his day, and his death at 42 means that his more mature work can only be speculative. Surviving evidence of his work

in each field shows an artist vividly aware of traditional styles and drawing on the ideas of his immediate predecessors in the Arts and Crafts Movement. His modesty and

unworldliness, attested by the obituarist and evident in the correspondence (he seems always to have been late in delivering work) kept him from achieving the reputation enjoyed by some of his contemporaries. His remarkable

versatility perhaps prevented his being regarded as a major figure in any one craft. The survival of the archive in Cardiff does however provide a poignant glimpse into the life and working practices of a personality described by an

associate, the calligrapher Mervyn Oliver, as 'the most cultured man I ever knew'.24

AUTHOR

Muriel Wilson retired in 1993 after a career in arts administration, and has since been

informally studying design and applied arts

history, with particular reference to jewellery. She has published a short paper on John Bonnor's silver, in the Journal of the -Silver

Society ol.l5, 2003.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Oliver Fairclough and Andrew Renton of the Art Department of the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, to David

Beasley, Librarian to the Goldsmiths'

Company, and to Mrs Annabel Bloxham, John Bonnor's grand-daughter, for their continuing help and support in this study.

I24 THE DECORATIVE ARTS SOCIETY JOURNAL 2OO4



NOTES. 1. The Studio (March 1920) Vol 79, Number 324, 12-20 2. From three marriages the Dean had fathered a total of 12

children, all but one of whom survived to adulthood, and seven of these produced sizeable families.

3. George Bonnor seems not to have followed a consistent career. He is recorded as an estate manager on John's birth certificate, but as 'army captain' on his son's marriage certificate in 1908. Family tradition has it that he left his wife and family, but there is evidence that at least John maintained contact with him until his death in 1912.

4. Walkley, G. ( 1 994) Artists' Houses in London, 1 764-1 91 4. London, Thames and Hudson.

5. Clapham School of Art (6 Edgely Road, SE5) was established in 1886 under the London School Board. Clegg, G (1998) Clapham Past. London, Historical Publications.

6 . Keith Downes Young (1848-1929) formed a partnership with Henry Hall (?) from 1871. The practice specialized in buildings for hospitals and sanitoria for public schools.

7. Rose, P. (1993) 'It must be done now': The Arts and Crafts Exhibition at Burlington House, 1916. Decorative Arts Society Journal 17, 10, fig. 12.

8. Art Journal (July 1905), 288. 9. The Artificers Guild was set up in 1899 by Nelson

Dawson, with Edward Spencer as its principal designer. In 1903 Dawson sold the business to the Montague Fordham Gallery and Spencer became Director. The Guild continued at 9 Maddox Street until 1911 when it moved to 4 Conduit Street. The workshops were in Oil Mill Lane, Hammersmith. The Guild closed after Spencer's death in 1938.

10. The necklace was presented to Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery by Mrs Ann Hull Grundy in 1981.

11. The Bonnors rented 81 Moscow Road as a studio from May 1908. By February 1909 they were living at 121 Queens Road (now Queens way) and in June 1911 moved to live at 57 Moscow Road until August 1913.

12. Whall, C. (1905) Stained Glass Wor'. John Hogg, London. 13. The Ciborium is housed in the Treasury at Christ Church

Cathedral, Oxford.

14. Percy Morley Horder (1870-1944) was trained in George Devey's office. Much of his work in the early 20th century was concerned with vernacular style country houses in the south of England. His father was a Congregationalist minister, ensuring a steady flow work for churches. Horder had links with the Stroud area and built a number of hotels and pubs in Gloucestershire. By 1913 he was involved in design work for the rapidly expanding chain of Boots the Chemist shops. In 1926 he designed the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in Gower Street, with Verner Rees.

15. The casket is currently on display in the Local Industry section at the Museum in the Park, Stroud.

16. The Cheltenham Chronicle and Glo shire Graphic, No.515, Saturday 12 November 1910. Art and Literary Supplement. On 20 September 1912 at Dudbridge Mill the Duchess of Beaufort inaugurated Sir Alfred's next technical innovation by switching on the new electric powerhouse, using a key (as yet untraced) designed by John Bonnor.

17. In 1919 Morley Horder designed the new building for Nottingham University, whose Patron was Jesse Boot, later Lord Trent.

18. The sign is still in situ, and has been recently restored. Full scale cartoons remain in the Bonnor archive.

19. Founded in 1891 by Miss Jean Price to provide nourishing midday meals, cookery and sewing classes for the local factory girls.

20. Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (The London Institute). Minutes of the Council, 1909-1915.

21. Weaver, L. (November 1916) The late Lord Kitcheners Hobbies. Country Life, Vol. XX

22. Lord Kitchener of Khartoum died when HMS Hampshire, in which he was travelling to Archangel on a diplomatic mission to Russia, struck a mine and sank off the coast of Norway on 16 June 1916.

23. Charles Bonnor was a salesman in the jewellery trade based in Newark, NJ.

24. Farleigh, J. (1945) Fifteen Craftsmen on their Art. London, Sylvan Press.

JOHN HOUGHTON MAURICE BONNOR (1875 - I917) I25



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