Christopher Dresser, porcelain and the laws of ornamentation

Dr Robert Wilson is one of the major donors to the National Gallery of Victoria’s Decorative Arts Department. An exhibition of objects from his collection of 19th Century Ceramics and Glass is being held during this, the 150th anniversary year of the NGV. Since I am a passionate collector of 18th and 19th century porcelain myself, I was very keen to see Wilson's pieces from Minton, Worcester, Copeland and Burmantofts. However there is a slight difference. My treasures are readily available in the auction hourses, of average quality and of average prices. Wilson’s treasures are rare, of superb quality and fetch top prices.

Dresser pattern, published in Studies in Design 1874 

In this post, I want to concentrate on Christopher Dresser 1834–1904, partially because the NGV exhibition has an entire case filled with his art objects. Dresser was one the most important and influential designers in the later Victorian decades. It is said that he championed design reform in Britain while embracing modern manufacturing in the development of wallpaper, textiles, ceramics, glass, furniture and silver art.

Dresser pail, 1874, by Minton, Art Gallery of South Australia

Everyone knows his wallpapers - his patterns were first published in his 1874 book, Studies in Design, and were used on walls and for ceiling decoration. The designs were complex, tight and varied, but the colours were more limited: cobalt, tan, mustard, teal blue, dull green, red-brown, variously combined. Even more importantly, he specified very intricate rules of colour harmony in his books.

Dresser's baluster vase, porcelain, painted in coloured enamels by Minton

Soon his designs for wallpapers and fabrics could be used on ceramics. Minton and Josiah Wedgwood Companies were delighted to use his work and both companies exhibited his porcelain at the 1862 London International Exhibition, the 1867 Paris Exposition Universelle and in the London Exhibition of 1871. People seemed to love them.

3 legged bowl c1870, bone china, Metropolitan Mus, 9cm high

Roberta Smith got it right. She thought Dresser probably dreamed in abstract patterns, his imagination fed by an eclectic range of sources - particularly Japanese, but also Persian, Egyptian, Indian, pre-Columbian and Assyrian. Dresser did actually visit Japan, published articles on Japanese art forms and wrote an important book called Japan, Its Architecture, Art and Art Manufactures, 1882.

The Aesthetic Movement took place in the late Victorian period from the late 1860s to 1900, coinciding almost exactly with Dresser’s working career. The movement privileged aesthetic values over moral or social themes in the decorative arts. In one sense, its post-Romantic roots did not reflect the more usual Victorian values and so the movement definitely anticipated modernism. A pair of Minton Aesthetic Movement vases c1870 will show you how Dresser interpreted the concept.

Dresser bowls, c1870, blue printed underglaze with sea birds and waves on gilded ground by Minton, 15 cm diam, Christie’s

Dresser’s books were important for another reason. This was not an unthinking craftsman, creating randomly. In search of a moral design vocabulary, and true to Arts and Crafts philosophy, Dresser established principles based on Truth, Beauty and Power. Truth criticised imitation of materials. Beauty described a sense of timeless perfection in design. Power implied strength, energy and force in ornament, achieved through Knowledge.

Over the years, Dresser worked with or for many companies, and had a directing hand in some of them eg Minton & Co., Wedgwood, Dresser & Holme of Bradford and William Ault's pottery. Dresser's designs for ceramics in the 1880s appeared from a new Yorkshire factory at Linthorpe near Middlesbrough. A loc­al businessman called John Harrison had been interested in Dresser's theories of art and couldn’t wait to work with him in a ceramics enterprise. The Linthorpe pieces were largely distinguished by their interesting shapes and their decorative glazes, not by finely designed patterns.

If Dresser separated himself at all from the Arts and Crafts Movement, it was by recognising the benefits of the industrial revolution. He was, for example, perfectly happy to design and decorate machine-made objects. The application of the gold floral band onto the U-shaped vase was produced by another industrial technique, that of transfer decoration.

Dresser's U-shaped vase, 1886-9, porcelain by Minton, bands of gold stylised chrysanthemums over a deep blue glaze, 19cm high, Metropolitan Mus

He remained committed to analysing good design, writing books and journal articles that dealt with the use of materials and the simplicity of form. For a Bauhaus fan like me, it is amazing that Dresser could have "discovered" the concept of form following function decades earlier in Britain, rather than post-WW1 in Germany. But that might also explain why, after his death in 1904, Dresser's reputation plummeted and he was virtually forgotten by the 1930s.

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The NGV exhibition ended 1st January 2011. If you could not get to the NGV, I recommend you read Shock of the Old: Christopher Dresser's Design Revolution, Victoria & Albert Museum, 2004. Another exhibition, Christopher Dresser at the Fine Art Society, opened in London in September 2014. The review was very impressive.

Dresser, ceramic vase, made for Linthorpe, c1890, 22 cms high