Charles Voysey (architect)
Encyclopedia
Charles Francis Annesley Voysey (1857–1941) was an English architect
and furniture
and textile design
er. Voysey's early work was as a designer of wallpaper
s, fabrics
and furnishings in a simple Arts and Crafts
style, but he is renowned as the architect of a number of notable country houses. He was one of the first people to understand and appreciate the significance of industrial design
. He has been considered one of the pioneers of Modern Architecture
, a notion which he rejected. His English domestic architecture draws heavily on vernacular rather than academic tradition, influenced by the ideas of Herbert Tudor Buckland
(1869–1951) and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–1852).
, Yorkshire on 28 May 1857, the eldest son of Rev. Charles Voysey
, a schoolmaster who become Vicar of Healaugh but was deprived of his living. Voysey was educated by his father, then briefly at Dulwich College
. In 1874 Voysey was articled to J.P. Seddon, he studied for a year under George Devey
and established his own practice in 1882.
show at the New Gallery
in 1888. In 1893 he began designing wallpapers for Essex & Co., for whom he executed several hundred patterns.
Distinct stages can be identified in Voysey's wallpaper and textile designs. His earliest works, through the late 1880s, have historically-influenced traditional repeats. By the mid-1890s, he was creating his most characteristic and original designs, flowing patterns in pastel colourways with flattened silhouettes of birds, florals, and hearts. Designs were used for both wallpaper and textiles, which were often executed as wool double cloths for furnishing. Typical patterns of this period include The Saladin wallpaper, 1897 (sample) and The Owl jacquard-woven
woollen textile, 1898 (sample.) From 1910 onwards, his patterns became more narrative, with isolated motifs, and were often meant for the nursery. The Alice in Wonderland furnishing fabric, c.1920 (http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O69054/furnishing-fabric-alice-in-wonderland/), is typical of this phase. His last recorded wallpaper commission was dated 1930.
In 1896, The Studio
confirmed Voysey's place in the decorative arts, writing "Now a 'Voysey wall-paper' sounds almost as familiar as a 'Morris
chintz' or a 'Liberty silk'." Voysey also designed for Donegal Carpets
and many other firms over a fifty-year career in design.
for Octavius Dixie Deacon. A house was erected on the site, but whether it bore any relation to Voysey's design is not known. By 1894 Voysey had moved his practice to Melina Place, St John's Wood
, London, next door to the influential Arts and Crafts architect Edward Schroeder Prior
, resulting in the development of a long term friendship and exchange of ideas between the two men.
Voysey designed every detail of his houses, including the furniture. His houses were inspired by English vernacular sources of the 16th and early 17th centuries, featuring white roughcast walls with horizontal ribbon windows and huge pitched roofs, and used rough plaster
, slate
and other materials typical of English farmhouses.
Examples of his completed architectural works are: Perrycroft, Colwall
, Herefordshire 1893; Annesley Lodge, Hampstead
, London, 1896; Merlshanger (later Greyfriars), Hog's Back
, Puttenham near Guildford, 1896; Norney, Shackleford
, 1897; Spade House
, Sandgate
, Kent (the home of the writer H.G.Wells); The Pastures, North Luffenham
, Rutland 1903; The Orchard, Chorleywood
, 1900, which he designed for himself.
There are several examples of Voysey's design near Bowness-on-Windermere
, Cumbria, with roughcast walls and massive rendered stacks on sweeping slate roofs. Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner
greatly admired the Orchard and identified Broadleys as Voysey's masterpiece, seeing in them seeds of the modernist movement.
In fact, Voysey himself, who was Master of the Art-Workers Guild in 1924, had a strong dislike of modern architecture, and was irritated by Pevsner's identification of his work with the movement.
Broad Leys http://www.wmbrc.co.uk/house_and_history.htm (1908) is now the headquarters of the Windermere Motor Boat Racing Club, and featured in the film The French Lieutenant's Woman
. It is the only Voysey house open for the public to stay in.
Voysey died in Winchester
in 1941.
, the Arts and Crafts Movement and Art Nouveau
, and was concerned with form and function rather than ornamental complexities. He felt that "simplicity in decoration is one of the essential qualities without which no true richness is possible" and often worked in a limited colour palette, "emphasizing outline, eliminating shading, and minimizing detail."
His furniture designs were simple and functional, and only sparingly decorated. He particularly advocated that wood should be left with its natural finish, contrary to the popular techniques which covered wood with paint and stain. He eschewed the complexities identified with late Victorian
design.
Many modest houses built in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s were inspired by Voysey's simple vernacular country houses, although Voysey himself built no houses after 1918.
The Victoria and Albert Museum
has an extensive collection of Voysey's work, including design drawings, fabrics, carpets, and wallpapers.
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
and furniture
Furniture
Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things...
and textile design
Textile design
Textile design is the process of creating designs and structures for knitted, woven, non-woven or embellishments of fabrics.Textile designing involves producing patterns for cloth used in clothing, household textiles and decorative textiles such as carpets. The field encompasses the actual pattern...
er. Voysey's early work was as a designer of wallpaper
Wallpaper
Wallpaper is a kind of material used to cover and decorate the interior walls of homes, offices, and other buildings; it is one aspect of interior decoration. It is usually sold in rolls and is put onto a wall using wallpaper paste...
s, fabrics
Textile
A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...
and furnishings in a simple Arts and Crafts
Arts and Crafts movement
Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...
style, but he is renowned as the architect of a number of notable country houses. He was one of the first people to understand and appreciate the significance of industrial design
Industrial design
Industrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
. He has been considered one of the pioneers of Modern Architecture
Modern architecture
Modern architecture is generally characterized by simplification of form and creation of ornament from the structure and theme of the building. It is a term applied to an overarching movement, with its exact definition and scope varying widely...
, a notion which he rejected. His English domestic architecture draws heavily on vernacular rather than academic tradition, influenced by the ideas of Herbert Tudor Buckland
Herbert Tudor Buckland
Herbert Tudor Buckland was a British architect, best known for his seminal Arts and Crafts houses , the Elan Valley model village, educational buildings such as the campus of the Royal Hospital School in Suffolk and St Hugh's College in Oxford.-Biography:Buckland was born in...
(1869–1951) and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–1852).
Education
Born at Kingston College, at HessleHessle
Hessle is a town and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, situated west of Kingston upon Hull city centre. Geographically it is part of a larger urban area which consists of the city of Kingston upon Hull, the town of Hessle and a number of other villages but is not part of the...
, Yorkshire on 28 May 1857, the eldest son of Rev. Charles Voysey
Charles Voysey (theist)
Charles Voysey was an English Anglican priest who was condemned by the Privy Council for heresy and went on to found the Theist Church....
, a schoolmaster who become Vicar of Healaugh but was deprived of his living. Voysey was educated by his father, then briefly at Dulwich College
Dulwich College
Dulwich College is an independent school for boys in Dulwich, southeast London, England. The college was founded in 1619 by Edward Alleyn, a successful Elizabethan actor, with the original purpose of educating 12 poor scholars as the foundation of "God's Gift". It currently has about 1,600 boys,...
. In 1874 Voysey was articled to J.P. Seddon, he studied for a year under George Devey
George Devey
George Devey was a British architect, born in London, the second son of Frederick and Ann Devey. Devey was educated in London, after leaving school he initially studied art, with an ambition to become a professional artist...
and established his own practice in 1882.
Design
At the suggestion of his friend A. H. Mackmurdo, Voysey began designing wallpapers in 1883 under contract for Jeffrey & Co while waiting for architectural commissions to come in. He joined the Art-Workers' Guild in 1884, and displayed both printed textiles and wallpapers at the inaugural Arts and Crafts Exhibition SocietyArts and Crafts Exhibition Society
The Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society was formed in London in 1887 to promote the exhibition of decorative arts alongside fine arts. Its exhibitions, held annually at the New Gallery from 1888–90, and roughly every three years thereafter, were important in the flowering of the British Arts and...
show at the New Gallery
New Gallery (London)
The New Gallery was an art gallery founded at 121 Regent Street W., London, in 1888 by J. Comyns Carr and Charles Edward Hallé. Carr and Hallé had been co-directors of Sir Coutts Lindsay's Grosvenor Gallery, but resigned from that troubled gallery in 1887....
in 1888. In 1893 he began designing wallpapers for Essex & Co., for whom he executed several hundred patterns.
Distinct stages can be identified in Voysey's wallpaper and textile designs. His earliest works, through the late 1880s, have historically-influenced traditional repeats. By the mid-1890s, he was creating his most characteristic and original designs, flowing patterns in pastel colourways with flattened silhouettes of birds, florals, and hearts. Designs were used for both wallpaper and textiles, which were often executed as wool double cloths for furnishing. Typical patterns of this period include The Saladin wallpaper, 1897 (sample) and The Owl jacquard-woven
Jacquard loom
The Jacquard loom is a mechanical loom, invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1801, that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with complex patterns such as brocade, damask and matelasse. The loom is controlled by punched cards with punched holes, each row of which corresponds to one row...
woollen textile, 1898 (sample.) From 1910 onwards, his patterns became more narrative, with isolated motifs, and were often meant for the nursery. The Alice in Wonderland furnishing fabric, c.1920 (http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O69054/furnishing-fabric-alice-in-wonderland/), is typical of this phase. His last recorded wallpaper commission was dated 1930.
In 1896, The Studio
Studio Magazine
The Studio Magazine was an illustrated fine arts and decorative arts magazine, founded in Britain in 1893, which exerted a major influence on the development of the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts movements....
confirmed Voysey's place in the decorative arts, writing "Now a 'Voysey wall-paper' sounds almost as familiar as a 'Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
chintz' or a 'Liberty silk'." Voysey also designed for Donegal Carpets
Donegal Carpets
Donegal Carpets is a trademark brand of hand-made wool carpets produced in Killybegs, a town in County Donegal, Ireland. Donegal Carpets can be found in Dublin Castle, the Royal Pavilion of Brighton, Eltham Palace, and the U.S...
and many other firms over a fifty-year career in design.
Architectural work
Voysey's first design was for a house at LoughtonLoughton
Loughton is a town and civil parish in the Epping Forest district of Essex. It is located between 11 and 13 miles north east of Charing Cross in London, south of the M25 and west of the M11 motorway and has boundaries with Chingford, Waltham Abbey, Theydon Bois, Chigwell and Buckhurst Hill...
for Octavius Dixie Deacon. A house was erected on the site, but whether it bore any relation to Voysey's design is not known. By 1894 Voysey had moved his practice to Melina Place, St John's Wood
St John's Wood
St John's Wood is a district of north-west London, England, in the City of Westminster, and at the north-west end of Regent's Park. It is approximately 2.5 miles north-west of Charing Cross. Once part of the Great Middlesex Forest, it was later owned by the Knights of St John of Jerusalem...
, London, next door to the influential Arts and Crafts architect Edward Schroeder Prior
Edward Schroeder Prior
Edward Schroeder Prior was an architect who was instrumental in establishing the arts and crafts movement. He was one of the foremost theorists of the second generation of the movement, writing extensively on architecture, art, craftsmanship and the building process and subsequently influencing...
, resulting in the development of a long term friendship and exchange of ideas between the two men.
Voysey designed every detail of his houses, including the furniture. His houses were inspired by English vernacular sources of the 16th and early 17th centuries, featuring white roughcast walls with horizontal ribbon windows and huge pitched roofs, and used rough plaster
Plaster
Plaster is a building material used for coating walls and ceilings. Plaster starts as a dry powder similar to mortar or cement and like those materials it is mixed with water to form a paste which liberates heat and then hardens. Unlike mortar and cement, plaster remains quite soft after setting,...
, slate
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...
and other materials typical of English farmhouses.
Examples of his completed architectural works are: Perrycroft, Colwall
Colwall
Colwall is a village and civil parish in Herefordshire, England on the border with Worcestershire, nestling into the side of the Malvern Hills. Areas of the village are known as Colwall Stone, Upper Colwall and Colwall Green along over a mile of the B4218 road...
, Herefordshire 1893; Annesley Lodge, Hampstead
Hampstead
Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...
, London, 1896; Merlshanger (later Greyfriars), Hog's Back
Hog's Back
The Hog's Back is a part of the North Downs in Surrey, England, that lies between Farnham, Surrey in the west and Guildford in the east.-Name:Compared with the main part of the Downs to the east of it, it is a narrow elongated ridge, hence its name....
, Puttenham near Guildford, 1896; Norney, Shackleford
Shackleford
Shackleford is a village in Surrey, England lying to the west of the A3 between Guildford and Petersfield. Neighbouring villages include Puttenham, Peper Harrow and Eashing....
, 1897; Spade House
Spade House
Spade House was the home of the science fiction writer H. G. Wells from 1901 to 1909. It is a large mansion overlooking Sandgate, near Folkestone in southeast England.-History:...
, Sandgate
Sandgate, Kent
Sandgate is a village in the Folkestone and Hythe Urban Area in the Shepway district of Kent, England. In 2004, the village re-acquired civil parish status....
, Kent (the home of the writer H.G.Wells); The Pastures, North Luffenham
North Luffenham
North Luffenham is a village in Rutland, in the East Midlands of England. It lies to the north of the River Chater, east of Uppingham and west of Stamford.Located to the north of the village is St George's Barracks, formerly RAF North Luffenham....
, Rutland 1903; The Orchard, Chorleywood
Chorleywood
Chorleywood is a village and civil parish in the Three Rivers district of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. It had a population of 6,814 people at the 2001 census. The parish of Chorleywood as a whole has a population of 10,775. The town lies in the far south west of Hertfordshire, on the...
, 1900, which he designed for himself.
There are several examples of Voysey's design near Bowness-on-Windermere
Bowness-on-Windermere
Bowness-on-Windermere is a town in South Lakeland, Cumbria, England. Due its position on the banks of Windermere the town has become a tourist honeypot. Although their mutual growth has caused them to become one large settlement, the town is distinct from the town of Windermere as the two still...
, Cumbria, with roughcast walls and massive rendered stacks on sweeping slate roofs. Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner
Nikolaus Pevsner
Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner, CBE, FBA was a German-born British scholar of history of art and, especially, of history of architecture...
greatly admired the Orchard and identified Broadleys as Voysey's masterpiece, seeing in them seeds of the modernist movement.
In fact, Voysey himself, who was Master of the Art-Workers Guild in 1924, had a strong dislike of modern architecture, and was irritated by Pevsner's identification of his work with the movement.
Broad Leys http://www.wmbrc.co.uk/house_and_history.htm (1908) is now the headquarters of the Windermere Motor Boat Racing Club, and featured in the film The French Lieutenant's Woman
The French Lieutenant's Woman (film)
The French Lieutenant's Woman is a 1981 film directed by Karel Reisz and adapted by playwright Harold Pinter. It is based on the novel of the same title by John Fowles...
. It is the only Voysey house open for the public to stay in.
Voysey died in Winchester
Winchester
Winchester is a historic cathedral city and former capital city of England. It is the county town of Hampshire, in South East England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government district, and is located at the western end of the South Downs, along the course of...
in 1941.
Legacy
Voysey was influenced by the work of William MorrisWilliam Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
, the Arts and Crafts Movement and Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau
Art Nouveau is an international philosophy and style of art, architecture and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that were most popular during 1890–1910. The name "Art Nouveau" is French for "new art"...
, and was concerned with form and function rather than ornamental complexities. He felt that "simplicity in decoration is one of the essential qualities without which no true richness is possible" and often worked in a limited colour palette, "emphasizing outline, eliminating shading, and minimizing detail."
His furniture designs were simple and functional, and only sparingly decorated. He particularly advocated that wood should be left with its natural finish, contrary to the popular techniques which covered wood with paint and stain. He eschewed the complexities identified with late Victorian
Victorian architecture
The term Victorian architecture refers collectively to several architectural styles employed predominantly during the middle and late 19th century. The period that it indicates may slightly overlap the actual reign, 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901, of Queen Victoria. This represents the British and...
design.
Many modest houses built in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s were inspired by Voysey's simple vernacular country houses, although Voysey himself built no houses after 1918.
The Victoria and Albert Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
has an extensive collection of Voysey's work, including design drawings, fabrics, carpets, and wallpapers.