While I was writing the entry I posted on Pugin, Deane and Woodward and others from that extraordinary period of creativity and production - It set me thinking.............. 14.03.10 - I had in my mind's eye a little book that I had bought in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London before I moved to Ireland in 1967.

I went looking for it and this is what I found...

.... sadly it had succumbed to damp in the mill and all its pages were stuck together.
This infuriated me, as within it were examples of the work of many of the people to whom I had referred in the entry, so much so that I decided to see if I could find another copy.

I emailed the V&A and HMSO in London but neither of them could assist.

So I went to Amazon and, low and behold, there it was - three copies of it to choose from! One at €5.00 another at €1.00 and the third at €0.99.

I decided to order the €1.00 copy which was described as being in 'very good' condition.

And three days later, for an outlay of less than €5.00 including packing and posting, it arrived...

(This was its cost when it was published in 1962 - 19 cent in today's money - so perhaps I didn't get such a bargain, after all!)

But anyway, now I can show you images of the work of some of those people I mentioned as creative icons of their age.

For obvious reasons I have focused on their furniture designs but it should be remembered that these men, variously, also left an indelible mark on architecture, interior, fabric and wall-paper design, the promotion of craft idustry over mass production, political thought and much, much more.

(I've decided to get over my anxiety about putting-up other people's images in this instance, as I reckon that items that are in public ownership and on public view, are unlikely be subject to copyright).

And here is the Victoria & Albert Museum's example of the William Morris 'Sussex' chair of which I have one also.
In the brief 'Technical Notes' that precede the picures in the little book, they say "SUSSEX CHAIR". Turned and ebonised beech with rush seat. Based on a traditional country type and made by Morris & Co., from about 1865 onwards."
Now, as I also mentioned (and showed) in - It set me thinking.............. 14.03.10 - I also own one of the 'traditional' chairs from which this chair was derived.
(And, as I mentioned there, I will be doing an analysis of the construction of these two chairs in a future post.)

It is fascinating - to me anyway - to note that the earliest item shown here, the Pugin table, was made in 1847 and the latest, the Mackintosh chair, was made exactly fifty years later in 1897.
And, to note further that the progression from the heavy, high-Victorian Gothic of Pugin to the early Art Nouveau of Mackintosh, also took place within this period.

Or, as the writer of the introduction to my 'new' book, who only identifies himself as E.A., wrote.....

'The Morris 'Sussex' chair and the furniture of E.W. Godwin, C.F.A. Voysey and C.R. Mackintosh, have been included not only because they had an important influence in their own day but because these pieces contain the beginnings of twentieth-century design.'

........... I couldn't have put it better myself, sir.