The Secular Furniture Of E W Godwin

Susan Weber Soros

Editions

Review

E W Godwin is considered to be one of the most significant practitioners of 19th century English architecture and design, but is best known today for the great examples of his Japanese inspired ebonised furniture which are regarded as icons of both Victorian taste and the Modernist movement.

Susan Weber Soros traces the development of his style, starting from early English influences via Pugin and a wide range of design traditions from all over the world, culminating in the Anglo-Japanese masterpieces which so endeared him to Oscar Wilde, Whistler and others in the pantheon of Victorian Greats.

We are given details of the makers, clients and current whereabouts, with sketches and photographs, new and contemporary, of all known examples of his domestic output: tables, chairs, day-beds, settles, cabinets, coat racks, umbrella stands, wash stands, beds, brackets, screens, mirrors, pianos, whatnots and gongs in a wide variety of styles.  This vast range justifies Max Beerbohm’s comment that Godwin was “the greatest aesthete of them all”. - review by Stewart Grimshaw

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