Summer Exhibition 2009

The Arts & Crafts Exhibits

36. Two from a harlequin set of 10 oak Glasgow Style dining chairs with centrally peaked back rail above split heart cut-outs and leather upholstered drop in seats designed by E A Taylor and made by Wylie & Lochhead.

Circa 1905

100cm (41.5in) high

Illustrated: 'In The Glasgow Style', The Millinery Works 1999.

Ernest Archibald Taylor began his career as a draughtsman at Scott & Co Ltd, the Clyde Shipyard. He moved to Wylie & Lochhead in 1893/94 as a trainee, attended part time courses and soon began to teach.

E A Taylor 1874 - 1951

"most talented of the generation that had followed ... Mackintosh and Walton".

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From 1899 he and George Logan ran the furniture design course at the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College (GWSTC). Taylor was also an instructor in furniture design at the Glasgow School of Art from 1903 - 05. In 1906 he took up the post of director of the industrial art section at  the GWSTC.

In this short but innovative period Taylor's teaching was, like that of Charles Spooner at Lethaby's Central School in London, often overlooked but quite remarkable for its far reaching influence.

When Wylie & Lochhead moved to associate themselves with the emerging Glasgow Style, Taylor along with John Ednie, George Logan and David Gow, was crucial to their success. At the 1901 Glasgow Exhibition 'they created a house style which caught the public imagination.

Taylor's experiments with colour were considered the most astounding. For him 'the harmony and relation of colours were central to "many of the relations of life", and his interiors were designed to make people think. The influential German critic Herman Muthesius thought Taylor's work was the "most talented of the generation that had followed ... Mackintosh and Walton".

Jeff Jackson - The Glasgow Style 1999