Ayla Lepine, “On the Founding of Watts & Co., 1874”

1874 was a momentous year for British political and religious life. As James Bentley wrote in his introduction to Ritualism and Politics in Victorian Britain, “It has been said that the Conservative ministry of 1874-80 ‘got off to a quiet start.’ This was not the impression of those who lived through it” (Bentley vii). In the spring and summer of 1874, just as Watts and Company developed into a viable business to fulfill what its partners identified as a growing need for both Gothic Revival and Aesthetic Movement furnishings, textiles and fittings in ecclesiastical and domestic contexts, the Public Worship Regulation Act was debated and passed through Parliament. Its stipulations meant that no fewer than five clergymen would be prosecuted and imprisoned for their use of the kinds of materials—such as vestments, incense and altar bread—that Watts intended to produce (Bentley vii).[1] From the outset, Watts’ establishment was both fashionable and rebellious. Its founders were personally and professionally committed to the transformation of the Anglican Church and the promotion of ritualism. Since the 1850s, G. F. Bodley—together with Thomas Garner from 1868—was at the forefront of High Anglican architecture and design. George Gilbert Scott junior also promoted a vision for Victorian Anglican experience that drew on late Gothic motifs and pre-Reformation liturgies.

Many believed that the Act’s intention was to crush ritualism, a movement that had sprung up within Anglicanism in the wake of the spiritual and theological reawakening begun with the Oxford Movement in the 1830s. Ritualism encouraged pre-Reformation liturgies, sensory and material signs of the divine based on medieval practices (including vestments, incense, lit candles, an emphasis on the sacraments and the Eucharist in particular, and the eastward-facing position during the Eucharist). In the Church of England, many of these ideas and their associated architecture and aesthetics were anathema, and there was a great deal of debate regarding “popery” and “Puseyism,” the latter referring to E. B. Pusey, a co-founder of the 1830s Oxford Movement and Tractarian writer. The Ecclesiological Society, first convened as the Cambridge Camden Society in 1839, was also a crucial part of the ritualist movement. Advocating for specific applications of the Gothic Revival in order to reinvest the Church of England’s buildings and worship with dignity and propriety derived from medieval example, the Society’s journal, The Ecclesiologist, became a powerful force, determining a Gothic Revival architect’s success or failure in adhering to these newly established (and evolving) medievalist and controversial expectations.

From the 1830s, A. W. N. Pugin’s Gothic Revival designs and fiery treatises on medieval art and architecture as a salve for Victorian Britain’s design and moral future were creating a significant impact amongst architects, artists, and the general public. Architects such as William Butterfield and George Edmund Street worked with church fittings and metalwork manufacturers to create interiors and accessories in addition to their Gothic Revival architectural repertoire. In the 1840s and 1850s publications such as the Directorium Anglicanum and The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments encouraged clergy and designers to take a more medieval approach to building and liturgical matters. In 1866, publications such as the Rev. G. R. Prynne’s Eucharistic Manual advocated for the use of vestments, lit candles, and the placement of a cross upon the altar. These trends within Anglicanism were supported and lampooned in equal measure, and on April 8, 1871, Punch magazine published “Mr Punch’s ABC for Youthful Anglicans,” underscoring the appeal of ritualism for young idealist clergy and congregations. Deformity, exoticism, appeal to the senses of touch, smell, and sight, aesthetic taste, and controversy all play their part in the satirical rhyme:

C is for Chasuble, hung on a peg,
And useful to hide the defects in the leg.
D’s a Dalmatic, for festival use
Embroidered all o’er by an Anglican goose.
E is an Eagle, which serves as a desk,
In part medieval, in part arabesque.
F is a Frontal, which gracefully fell
O’er the altar, affronting the people as well.
O is the Orphrey, a piece of embroidery
Worked o’er the vestments to make them more tawdry.
T is the Thurible, whose very smell
Incenses the people, and makes them rebel. (qtd. in Anson 215)

In 1875, just as the Public Worship Regulation Act began to bite, the English Church Union defiantly agreed upon “six points” for ritualistic worship: vestments, the eastward position, altar lights, the mixture of water and wine in the chalice at Holy Communion, wafer bread, and incense (Cross and Livingstone 1281). The Public Worship Regulation Act, championed by Disraeli as “the most successful, [and] certainly one of the most important, events in modern political history” (qtd. in Bentley 59) brought W. E. Gladstone out of retirement to advocate against it and drew religion into the House of Commons as never before. The Bill, passed in August 1874, was described by William G. Brooke as having three principal points:

1. The Fabric, Furniture, Ornaments and Decorations of the Church
2. The Dress of the officiating Minister
3. The Observance of the Rubrics in the performance of Divine Service

The intention of the act being to put down open and flagrant disobedience of the Law, it is provided that if the Archdeacon, or a Churchwarden, or three parishioners are of opinion that any unauthorised or illegal act has been committed, or any act that ought to have been done has been omitted to be done, in relations to the matters, set out above, he or they may represent it to the Bishop in the form prescribed in the schedule of the Act . . . (2)

The Act outlawed the use of a chasuble, alb, tunicle, stole, dalmatics, and maniples during the celebration of the Eucharist (Brooke 38). As Peter F. Anson points out, however, the litigation against various practices and objects associated with ritualism and the Catholic revival within Anglicanism was not consistent or particularly logical: “A credence table was considered illegal in 1845 and 1855, but legal in 1857; altar lights illegal in 1855-56 and 1868, but legal in 1890; colored altar frontals and an altar cross illegal in 1855-56 but legal in 1857; flower vases on the altar illegal in 1847, but legal in 1870” (213-14).[2] These types of clerical vestments mentioned above, in addition to metalwork such as thuribles for incense and later even monstrances for the adoration of the sacrament on the altar at Benediction, were amongst the objects designed, produced, and sold by Watts and Company, founded in 1874 amongst the political turmoil surrounding the Anglican Church and its ritualist faction.

Watts and Company supplied both domestic and ecclesiastical items from its inception in 1874 and continues to do so today. When begun by the architects George Frederick Bodley (1827-1907), Thomas Garner (1839-1906), and George Gilbert Scott junior (1839-97), its intention was to design and produce objects “of artistic character. Embroidery and Textile Fabrics, such as Damask, Silks, Velvets, Woollen and other Hangings, will be included in the List of Goods, which will also comprise Wall Papers and Stained Glass, together with all the usual articles of Household Furniture” (Schoeser 83). The same advertisement promised that “such an Establishment will meet a growing want. Special pains will be taken to secure correctness and beauty of colour” (Hall 185).[3] As James Bettley’s research has demonstrated, there was a marked increase in church furnishers in London through the 1870s: “From the nine firms listed in 1865, there was a rise to 26 in 1875, 34 in 1885 and 42 in 1895. Among those firms listed only as ‘church furnishers’ there is a similar increase, from seven in 1865 to 14 in 1875…” (3).

Though there are few surviving records of the firm’s first commissions and clients prior to 1880, what does exist demonstrates the importance and the freshness of what Watts offered to its first clients.[4] Wallpaper designs by Watts’ founding members were registered in the Public Record Office as early as 1870, when G. F. Bodley designed a pattern and named it, perhaps unimaginatively, “Bodley.” By 1914 the firm had designed a range of twenty papers. A company inventory, drawn up in 1878, lists papers including “Jasmine,” “Bird,” “Genoese,” and “Sunflower.”[5] William Morris’ firm also had papers named “Jasmine” and “Sunflower,” and the latter is especially notable as the sunflower was a key emblem of the Aesthetic Movement and an important image for numerous artists and designers. Watts, however, was unique in merging Aesthetic Movement and Gothic Revival tastes. One of the most unusual and demonstrative examples is a design—probably by Bodley—for a chasuble (Fig. 1). This garment, worn by a priest presiding at a Eucharist, was made for Richard Meux Benson c.1882. Benson was a founding member of the Society of St John the Evangelist, a monastic community founded in 1865 and the first organization of its kind established in England since the Reformation. The garment features sunflowers beneath a depiction of the body of Christ on the back and interlaces passages from the Song of Solomon and George Herbert’s seventeenth-century poem “IESU” on the front.[6]

Watts’ first showroom opened in 1879 at 30 Baker Street (Hall 184). Prior to this the firm was registered at Scott’s architecture practice at 7 Duke Street, and this was the first address given for Watts and Company in Kelly’s London Street Directory for 1875 (Schoeser 83; Hall 184). In a postscript for a letter dated June 10, 1874, to E. S. Heywood, the patron for Bodley’s St Augustine’s, Pendlebury, Bodley wrote, “We are starting our establishment for furniture – for church & house. I will send you a notice about it soon.”[7] When Watts was established in the summer of 1874, Bodley was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors and held this position until his death in 1907. Scott, Bodley, and Garner were listed as the firm’s “art directors and architects,” for which they would be paid a dividend of the profits. Watts’ Director was Francis William Davenport, the brother-in-law of a silk throwster from Derbyshire. Both men also had shares in the company, and Francis William also listed his address as 30 Baker Street, meaning that he effectively lived above the shop.[8]

In the 1870s Watts’ main competitors were Morris and Company, Kempe Studios, and Cox and Sons. Competition, however, was not always clear-cut, as Kempe had collaborated with Bodley and Garner on projects from the 1860s onward, Morris and Company occasionally commissioned work from Watts, and there were ongoing overlaps and alliances between architects and embroiderers who worked across several firms including Watts and Company.

At Watts, embroidery was carried out in-house and also outsourced to a number of convent communities. Architects formed close relationships with convent workrooms, not only seeking out particular styles of material production but also working with convent communities who were developing stylistic distinctiveness.[9] Watts’ distinctiveness was in part thanks to its founding members, who were architects as well as the firm’s main designers, and consciously integrated their architectural projects, both sacred and secular, with established and new designs in metalwork, textiles, and furnishings for the firm. That which was developed for one project could be accessed and recommissioned by clients or the architects themselves for future work. It is also significant to note that the earliest fabric designs were suitable for both secular and sacred applications. Many of the designs themselves were reworkings and revivals of historical sources, from Italian early Renaissance textiles to eighteenth-century English flocked papers. The former were increasingly accessible for study in London, as textile patterns featured in paintings acquired for the National Gallery collection; textile fragments also formed an important part of the Victorian acquisitions at the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum). These textile patterns, particularly those from Italian fifteenth-century sources, became important models for decorating walls with painted patterns, such as in churches designed by Bodley including All Saints, Jesus Lane, St John’s, Tue Brook in Liverpool, and All Saints, Pendlebury near Manchester.[10] As Michael Hall notes, “Bodley’s interest in the patterns of late medieval and Renaissance luxury textiles went back at least as far as the 1860s” (181). Garner’s “Gothic,” a silk damask, and Bodley’s “The Pine,” a brocatelle, are both early examples of this practice. (See Fig. 2.] The latter was based on a fifteenth-century velvet pattern and was woven for Watts by H. Scott Richmond and Company in Tours, France.[11] Patterns developed for textiles and wallpapers were also shared between the two media, depending on the desired effect. This dynamic production resulted in, for example, a Watts textile and paper called “Pear,” developed in 1874 and based on an early eighteenth-century wallpaper in Oxford, being used for interior furnishings at Bodley and Garner’s restoration of Ham House in the 1890s and for the grand ceremonial copes worn by the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s Cathedral for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897.[12] (See Fig. 3.) Watts’ important relationship with the monarchy was cemented when in 1902 the firm was commissioned to create furnishings and vestments bespoke for the coronation of Edward VII in Westminster Abbey. Watts has provided textiles for every coronation since (Schoeser 87).

Account books from 1879-86 show that more than 2,000 projects were carried out for over 200 clients in that period. The largest proportion of the clients were not clergy (35 are listed) but rather the fashionable elite of Victorian society, including Lady Dorchester, Earl Zetland, Countess Spencer, and Emily Meynell-Ingram (Schoeser 86). Many of those listed were also Bodley, Garner, and Scott junior’s architectural clients for both ecclesiastical and secular commissions. The firm’s close relationship to the partners’ architectural output was commercially and creatively productive; much of the firm’s work, particularly with regard to wallpapers and textiles, could also be purchased by the public and commissioned in addition to the architects’ own ongoing practice. It was Watts’ ecclesiastical commissions that grew to dominate their domestic output, particularly after the First World War. When the company began, however, the secular and sacred output of the firm was on equal footing and shown in the same business premises near London’s fashionable Marylebone and pointedly away from the area of the Strand and Southampton Street, where William Morris disparagingly observed in the 1860s that so many ecclesiastical furnishers plied their trade, offering buyers uninspiring designs without due care to the use of quality materials or artistic principles (Bettley 17).

The optimistic foundation of Watts occurred simultaneously—and probably not coincidentally—with drastic changes at Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, the firm founded by William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Philip Webb, and their circle in 1861. By the summer of 1874 Morris had announced to the six partners in the firm that he wished to take sole ownership of the company (MacCarthy 260). This split the group into two factions, one that stood with Morris’ decision and the other that felt that this move would undermine their creative investment in the project just when it was beginning to be significantly profitable. The rupture is perhaps best summed up by Arnold Rattenbury in “1875: Morris & Co”:

This was the year that Morris took
to himself the “Old Firm”—hook, line
and probably sinker, by the look of the books.

He lost one friend and nearly others
who long ago, in another world
before Raphael, had seemed Brothers.

They had other fish to fry.
Here, it could have been a mackerel sky
reflected in water—not truth, but a lie—

nagging at him (as some still say)
that his would be the dream that got away
for it must sell. But who will pay? (18)

Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Peter Paul Marshall employed the lawyer Theodore Watts to negotiate with Morris on their behalf (MacCarthy 261). The popular legend about the name of Watts and Company was that the three architects did not wish to be associated with trade and, therefore, to preserve their class credentials in dealing with architectural commissions, made a play on “What’s in a name?” when deciding on their company’s title. Michael Hall has posited that Watts and Company may be named for a clergyman named Watts who was also a somewhat disliked property owner in Hampstead, where Bodley and Garner lived in neighboring houses in Church Row.[13] Perhaps another theory is that Bodley, Garner, and Scott, who would have been well aware of Morris’ difficulties with the future infrastructure of his firm, named their rival business after the lawyer representing partners in Morris’ company who disagreed with his new direction.

The interlacing social and professional ties between Morris and Bodley are many, and even after the foundation of Watts and its clear signal that Bodley and Garner would rely far less on Morris for furnishings and decorative details within their buildings, Morris and Bodley continued to work together on a number of projects. As Linda Parry and others have commented, Bodley was invited to join Morris’ firm in the 1860s, and both he and Scott junior were involved in designs for Morris’ company.[14] One such product of this early closeness was “Indian,” a wallpaper pattern sold by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, which was probably designed by Scott junior in 1867 or 1868 (Parry 207). It proved popular and still adorns the walls for Frederic Lord Leighton’s bedroom in Kensington. Scott, Morris, and Webb also collaborated on the interior paintings for Scott junior’s All Saints, Middleton Cheney in Northamptonshire in 1865. Bodley was a vocal supporter of Pre-Raphaelite art and a member of the short-lived Hogarth Club for artists and architects in the late 1850s.[15] Moreover, Bodley was the first architect to commission Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company to undertake stained glass and interior painting schemes for churches, and they collaborated throughout the 1860s on All Saints, Selsley in Gloucestershire; St Martin-on-the-Hill, Scarborough in Yorkshire; St Michael and All Angels in Brighton; and All Saints, Jesus Lane in Cambridge. They also worked together on the chapel ceiling at Jesus College, Cambridge in 1866-67. In 1869-70 Scott junior provided a new decorative scheme for the Senior Combination Room at Peterhouse, Cambridge; this also featured ceramics designed by Morris’ firm (Parry 139). One of Morris and Company’s first commissions after its 1875 transformation was the vivid painted interior of the Old Hall at Queens’ College, Cambridge. This too was a project that, like the contemporary stained glass windows for Jesus College designed by Edward Burne-Jones, Bodley negotiated and encouraged as a collaboration. This took place after Watts was founded and after Bodley and Garner began to work more closely with the stained glass producers Burlison and Grylls, explaining that “I find I get my own way [with Burlison and Grylls] more than I can with Morris” (qtd. in Parry 114). Bodley and Garner increasingly used Burlison and Grylls for stained glass. They had trained first with Clayton and Bell, which Garner helped to found, for their stained glass designs; yet, they also worked on projects alongside Morris and Charles Eamer Kempe until the turn of the twentieth century. That said, on March 25, 1877, Morris wrote to Thomas Wardle, with whom he worked on dying textiles for Morris and Company in Leek, Staffordshire. Morris was “much obliged” by Wardle’s “determination to say no to Watts & Company; I think it would be awkward for their things to be dyed along with ours; besides those gentlemen are rather too ready to ‘enter into our labours’ without a word if they can get the chance” (Kelvin 187). Indeed, in 1908 F. M. Simpson’s obituary for Bodley recalled that in the 1870s “Morris and Watts, very different in their ideals, were almost the only places in London where really fine hangings, wallpapers etc could be bought” (Simpson 152). It is insufficiently nuanced simply to argue that as the fashion for Morris’ material waned Watts’ productivity bloomed or to suggest that there was a strong feeling of competitive animosity between the two firms. Both firms also combined medievalism with an eclectic range of influences championed by Aesthetic Movement artists and patrons from the 1860s. This view was applied to furniture design and given further support by Charles Eastlake and E. W. Godwin. Additionally, Morris’ business manager Warington Taylor observed,

Massive thick furniture was good in a medieval castle—but is it suited to our wants . . . is not Queen Anne furniture better suited to our wants. Constructional, but light—unnecessary thickness is of no use, and is thickness a beauty. The Japanese spirit of early Worcester china is good—The painted cabinets in Japanese style of Queen Anne time are good—The inlaid furniture of Queen Anne time is good, it has something Dureresque and altogether does not Queen Anne furniture offer us the best motifs whereon to work now.

Some of the earliest furniture Watts produced was designed in the Queen Anne style by George Gilbert Scott junior for the new London School Board offices on the Embankment in London. Bodley and Garner had won the School Board architectural commission in 1872. This prominent secular project for the architects, combined with Scott’s special interest in furnishings, may have been an important factor in prompting the establishment of Watts and Company. Watts was referred to by name in the records relating to furnishings for the London School Board in July 1874.[16] Hall observes that the mingling of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century motifs with his own inventive details have parallels with his only country house commission, Garboldisham Manor in Norfolk, which kept Scott junior busy c.1868-74 (Hall 187). The early 1870s also brought two major domestic commissions for Bodley and Garner: Garner’s River House in Chelsea, a large Queen Anne-style Aesthetic Movement terraced house for the Hon. J. C. Dundas, and Bodley and Garner’s Master’s Lodge for University College, Oxford. As Charles Faulkner, of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company fame, was then bursar at University College, Bodley and Garner’s work there was underpinned by some two decades of friendship with the college’s mathematician and artist bursar (Whyte). Unfortunately, the original furnishings and interiors of River House are unknown. University College archival records indicate that Bodley was able to use Watts for door furniture, bell pulls, and metal work, and possibly for textiles and wallpapers.[17] For all other aspects of the interior, the records indicate that he was the primary supervisor, but the firms and patterns he may have chosen are unknown.

As with the numerous ecclesiastical commissions mentioned above, interior decoration for domestic projects could involve blending Morris’ and Watts’ products. In April 1875, Scott junior’s plan for the interior of the vicarage for St Mark’s, Leamington Spa showed how Watts and Morris and Company papers could be combined: “Papers—Hall—Morris new fruit . . . /green pear flock below/ Drawing Room—Blue Watts satin paper/ Dining Room—Queen Anne (Morris) / Study—Green Fruit (Morris) or Green pattern with yellow flowers (Morris) . . . Blue Bodley . . . Green Venetian . . . ”[18] For the manufacture of church plate, Watts used Barkentin and Krall. For wooden fittings and furnishings, Watts often partnered with the Cambridge firm Rattee and Kett, as Bodley and Garner had done prior to Watts’ establishment for their architectural projects. Amongst firms like Cox and Sons, Jones and Willis, Jackson and Graham, and Barraud and Westlake, and even Morris and Company, Watts and Company were unusual because of their architect-founders, their strong repertoire and solid popularity for both ecclesiastical and domestic wares, and their credibility amongst both Aesthetic Movement patrons and Gothic Revival ritualists, and those who occupied mutual ground between these two fundamental drivers of British visual culture in the nineteenth century.

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