BOX CLEVER

Boxes enamelled by Fleetwood Charles Varley, one of the craftsmen in the celebrated Guild of Handicraft, are up for sale this month. Antique

Collecting lifts the lid

In the summer of 1902, the 39-year-old enameller Frank Charles Varley (1863-1942) took part in one of the most notable artistic migrations of the century. He was a member of the Guild of Handicraft, the architect Charles Robert (C.R.) Ashbee’s visionary, but ultimately doomed, collective of craftspeople who he moved from the East End, en masse, to the Cotswolds. In total 50 guildsmen and their families, some 200 people in all, descended on the Gloucestershire town of Chipping Campden, along with their workshops and equipment.

At the time the arts and crafts movement, with its hatred of machine-made products, was it its height. As a leading member of the group, Ashbee took the ethos one step further. He didn’t just care about creating beautiful things, he wanted to give artisans a satisfying and healthy work environment, forging an alternative society.

Ashbee had founded the Guild of Handicraft in 1888 in Whitechapel at the age of 25. In 1891, the guild opened workshops in Essex House on the Mile End Road.

While the guild’s premises were in one of the capital’s most impoverished areas, Ashbee was living in the ourishing artistic community in Chelsea at 74 Cheyne Road – one of seven neighbouring ames-side houses built to his own designs.

At the time the village-like Chelsea was awash with artists and poets. One of whom was the up-and-coming landscape watercolourist and enameller, Fleetwood Charles Varley. Varley, who lived in Beaufort Street o Cheyne Walk, was the grandson of one of this country’s most in uential watercolourists, John Varley (1778-1842), the founder of the Old Water-Colour Society in 1804 and even, so it is claimed, a descendant of Cromwell’s henchman, General Charles Fleetwood.

Firm pals

At the time Ashbee and Varley met, the guild was already ourishing, employing 50 men. Having opened a shop at Brook Street, just o Bond Street, it was also on the verge, in 1900, of obtaining its rst Royal warrant by appointment to Queen Victoria.

e guild’s work was being written about to critical acclaim in publications in the UK and abroad, even leading to a commission from the Grand Duke of Hesse’s Palace in Darmstadt in southwest Germany.

e two aspects of Ashbee’s life, architect and guildsman, ran hand in hand. He commissioned the guilde to provide furniture and decoration for his new builds, most of which were in Cheyne Walk.

Encountering Varley the two men found an immediate meeting of minds. Both shared arts and crafts’ ideals, particularly a preoccupation with the preservation of buildings of historic merit. Shortly after their rst meeting Ashbee invited Varley on the guild’s annual beanfeast – a boating trip along the ames.

Magpie and Stump

Varley soon started working for the guild, albeit it at rst on an ad-hoc basis. He joined guild members called on to decorate and furnish Ashbee’s newly-built number 37 Cheyne Walk which was known as the Magpie and Stump (named after an old inn which had stood on the site).

Above A silver and enamelled trinket box by the Guild of Handicraft Ltd, 1906, the cover probably designed by Fleetwood Charles Varley (1863-1942). It has an estimate of £1,000-£1,500

Above right e bottle designed by Ashbee and George Hart was one of the guild’s most popular designs (not in sale)

Below right e interior of 37 Cheyne Walk with a frieze designed by Agnes Ashbee, image public domain

Below A hammered pewter and enamel table box with an architectural view of a gateway, possibly painted by Fleetwood Charles Varley (1863–1924), stamped 083 to the base, it has an estimate of £300-£400 at this month’s sale e residence was a testing ground for many guild workers, who were developing techniques and ideas. Roger Fry painted the chimney-breast, while Arthur Cameron completed enamel work for the replace.

In the dining room Agnes Ashbee, the architect’s sister, designed a frieze of deer and peacocks. e room was furnished with a guild-built trestle table and ladder-back chairs. e rooms, at odds with prevailing Edwardian styles, were the rst evidence of Ashbee’s talents as an interior designer. e house went on to attract much critical acclaim, featuring in artistic periodicals of the day including e Art Journal and e Studio in 1895.

During the building work of 37 Cheynee Walk a number of glass bottles, which Ashbee believed to be Elizabethan, were excavated. In the late 1890s he designed a version of one of them (below) made by the glassworks of James Powell & Sons and later in his own workshops. e bottle went on to become one of the guild’s most successful and enduring designs, made by the