Joseph Joachim (1831-1907) was an Austro-Hungarian violinist, composer, conductor and teacher. After education in Pest and Vienna, he studied under Mendelssohn in Leipzig and was an ardent advocate of Mendelssohn's works throughout his life. He later studied under Liszt in Weimar, but came to reject composition in the 1860s and concentrate on performance and instruction. He established a school of instrumental music in the Konigliche Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin, as well as giving concerts internationally over the next forty years. He was particularly renowned for his individual performances of the violin works of J S Bach and Beethoven, as well as the regular concerts given with colleagues from the Hochschule, who formed the Joachim Quartet which Joachim had established in 1869. For further details on Joachim and the Joachim Quartet see Grove Dictionary of Music. Anne Isabella Ritchie was born in 1837, and was the eldest daughter of the author William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863). She was married in 1877 to the civil servant Sir Richmond Thackeray Willoughby Ritchie (1854-1912), and was a novelist, biographer and renowned society hostess. She died in 1919. For further details on the Ritchies see the Dictionary of National Biography.
William M Coulthard, organist, assembled this collection.
Sir Walter Galpin Alcock (1861-1947) was an English cathedral organist and also taught at the RCM.
George Dorrington Cunningham (1878-1948) was City of Birmingham organist, 1924-1948) and conducted the City of Birmingham Choir.
Basil Harwood (1859-1949) was an English organist and composer.
John Nicholson Ireland (1879-1962) was a composer, and organist and choirmaster of St Luke's Chelsea, 1904-1926.
F J Livesey was organist at St Bees Priory, 1887-1934.
Cecil Clutton (b 1909) is an English writer on the history and design of the organ.
Percy William Whitlock (1903-1946) was an English organist and composer.
Henry Willis (1821-1901) was an English organ builder.
George Dixon (1870-1950) was an English organ designer and writer on organs, and collaborated with the firm of Harrison and Harrison.
Marianne Charlotte Rowe was born at Norwood on 29 Jan 1860, the only child of Charles George and Marianne Rowe, who ran a school for girls at Warwick Hall, Maida Vale. She was a talented child pianist and commenced lessons aged ten with Sir Julius Benedict for nine years. She commenced composition and assumed the name 'Carlotta Rowe' for her publications. She married at nineteen but divorced three months later. She married George William Armstrong, a London solicitor, in 1886. His death two years later prompted her to devote her life to her mother and to composition. She composed numerous songs and dances, 'Jackeydora' a comic opera, 'The Little Reprobate' a musical comedy and the music for a number of one-act plays as well as the incidental music to Sidney Grundy's play 'The Silver Shield'. She died on 2 Feb 1924. A legacy in her will established at the Royal College of Music the Carlotta Rowe Composition Scholarship for a woman composer of light opera, and the Marianne Rowe Singing Scholarship to a soprano or mezzo-soprano.
It is thought that some of this material may have been acquired by Sir George Grove on one of his research trips to Austria and Germany, particularly for material relating to his 'favourite trio', Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schubert. He wrote significant monographs on the three composers for the first edition of the Dictionary of Music and Musicians, first published in 1879. Two occasions are particulary likely to have provided him some of these letters. In 1867 he made a memorable journey to Vienna with the composer Arthur Sullivan to search for material on Schubert's life and works, and visited Berlin and Leipzig in the autumn of 1879 for research on Mendelssohn.
Following the death of the composer Constant Lambert in 1951, the publisher and writer Hubert Foss was commissioned by George Harrap and Co to write a biography of Lambert. This work was curtailed by Foss's final illness and death in 1953, and thereafter the family of Lambert and Foss's widow Dora Foss attempted to find other suitable authors to undertake the biography. Angus Morrison accepted the task (he was also brother-in-law to Lambert). Born in 1902, he had studied the piano and composition at the RCM and joined the teaching staff there in 1926. Although his biography of Lambert was never published, he provided valuable source material for the biography Constant Lambert by R Shead (London, 1973).
Basil Lam died on 4 Mar 1984 at the age of 69. He played the harpsichord in various ensembles, and was best known for his BBC radio broadcasts on early and baroque music, in particular for his series, `Plainsong and the rise of European music'.
Adrian Francis Cruft, born Mitcham, 10 Feb 1921; educated Westminster Abbey Choir School and Westminster School; studied composition and double bass at Royal College of Music, 1938-1940 and 1946-1947; war service, 1940-1945; played with major London orchestras, 1947-1969; appointed teacher of harmony (composition), Royal College of Music, Jan 1962; Chairman of the Composers' Guild, 1966, and instrumental in the foundation of the British Music Information Centre, 1967; compositions include four cantatas, settings of anthems, canticles and carols, chamber music and orchestral works; died 20 Feb 1987.
The original idea for a national music school based in London's South Kensington estate had been that of Albert, the Prince Consort. Shortly after the Prince's death, Henry Cole, the creator of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and the Commissioners of the Great Exhibition had decided to create a scheme for its establishment by the Society of Arts (of which he was Honorary Secretary) on land at South Kensington provided by the Commissioners. The National Training School for Music (NTSM) opened on 17 May 1876 after a three-year planning period, with Arthur Sullivan as its first Principal (he was succeeded in 1881 by John Stainer). It was instituted as a five-year experiment supported by public subscription after which it was hoped to transfer management and funding to the State. Initially Cole had hoped to remodel the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) into a national free musical school in the mould of European conservatoires but this attempt had failed and the NTSM was instituted separately. It had been established with the grand intention of providing 300 free scholarships but this quickly proved impossible and a compromise was reached to provide 100 free scholarships for five years. When it opened there were only 70 scholarships and by 1878 it appeared the limited funding provided by private founders and corporate bodies would not suffice to enable the continuation of the School without government assistance. The School would have to seek some sort of alliance with the RAM in taking fee-paying students.
The Prince of Wales summoned a meeting in July 1878 to promote the establishment of a Royal and National College of Music, whose students, admitted on merit by examination, would enjoy full or partial scholarships. It was proposed that the College should emerge from an amalgamation of the RAM and the NTSM. The RAM initially seemed favourable to the union, and undertook negotiations with the Sub-Committee, under Prince Christian, of the Executive Committee appointed to oversee the establishment of the College. However in the same month the RAM rescinded its approval of the amalgamation, as the Honorary Secretary of the committee established at the RAM to look into the merger stated that according to its charter the RAM could not amalgamate with any other body. The NTSM was left to continue under difficult and uncertain circumstances, and took its first fee-paying students in autumn 1881. The Prince of Wales convened a national meeting of dignitaries at St James's Palace in February 1882 to promote the creation of a public fund to establish the Royal College of Music, which would become the state supported successor to the NTSM.
Sir Hubert Parry, born Bournemouth, 27 Feb 1848; educated Twyford School, near Winchester, Eton College; B Mus, 1866; read law and modern history, Exeter College, Oxford; studied in Stuttgart with Henry Hugo Pierson, 1867; worked at Lloyd's of London as an underwriter; took lessons with William Sterndale Bennett and Edward Dannreuther; composed works for piano for concerts at Dannreuther's home during the 1870s; engaged by George Grove as sub-editor for the Dictionary of Music and Musicians, to which Parry contributed more than 100 articles; appointed by Grove as Professor of Musical History, Royal College of Music (RCM), 1883; during the 1880s created four symphonies and a symphonic suite and an unsuccessful attempt at opera; the success of his ode 'Blest Pair of Sirens' brought commissions from provincial festivals for choral music, including 'Judith' (1888), 'Ode on St Cecilia's Day' (1889), 'L'Allegro ed Il Pensieroso' (1890), 'The Lotos-Eaters', (1892), 'Job' (1892) and 'King Saul' (1894); worked with Robert Bridges for the Purcell bicentenary on the ode 'Invocation to Music', 1895; composed a setting of the Magnificat in celebration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, 1897; succeeded Grove as Director of the RCM, 1895; knighted, 1897; collaborated with Bridges on 'A Song of Darkness and Light' (1898); appointed Heather Professor of Music, Oxford, 1900 (held until 1908); created a baronet, 1902; composed 'ethical oratorios' 'Voces clamantium' (1903), 'The Love that Casteth out Fear' (1904), 'The Soul's Ransom' (1906), 'The Vision of Life' (1907); composed settings for Dunbar's 'Ode on the Nativity' (1912) and Bridges' 'The Chivalry of the Sea' (1916), and the motets 'Songs of Farewell' (1914-1915); died Rustington, Sussex, 7 October, 1918. Publications: these include, as well as his numerous articles for journals and for the Grove Dictionary, Studies of Great Composers (London, 1886); The Art of Music (London, 1893; enlarged as The Evolution of the Art of Music, London, 1896); Summary of the History and Development of Mediaeval and Modern European Music (London, 1893); Johann Sebastian Bach: the Story of the Development of a Great Personality (New York and London, 1909); Style in Musical Art (London, 1911) [collected Oxford lectures].
Since the opening of the Royal College of Music (RCM) building in 1894, the College has undergone a series of extensions and additions. Of particular note are the extension block, constructed 1963-1964, and officially opened in November 1965, and the new Dining Room, Library, and Britten Opera Theatre designed by the Casson Condor Partnership, 1982-1986. The bulk of the plans held by the RCM pertain to this latter scheme, but also represented are drawings by Norman and Dawbarn of the Concert Hall, existing floor plans and plans of extensions to the RCM, squash court [proposed but never built], vault practice rooms and Parry Opera Theatre, opera school and students' recreation room, 1960-1973; a new Opera School staircase by Building Design Workshop North West, 1979; the refurbishment of the RCM Concert Hall by the Essex Goodman Design Company, 1990.
The first Registrar of the Royal College of Music (RCM), George Watson, was appointed in 1882, to manage student admission, administration and awards. The post has since been held as follows: Frank Pownall, 1896-1913; Claude L C Aveling, 1914-1935; Basil C Allchin, 1935-1939; Hugo V Anson, 1939-1958; John R Stainer, 1959-1975; Michael Gough Matthews, 1976-1984; Jasper L Thorogood, 1984-1988. The registers of students of the RCM form the chief source of information on students for the period prior to 1977, giving details of student's background and academic progress and accomplishments. The registers of Scholarship applications give details of name, address, age, subject, and results of those who competed for open scholarships of the RCM. The registers of student applications give details of those who applied for admission as students of the RCM, and give addresses, subject of examinations taken and application fees.
The Sacred Harmonic Society was founded in London as an amateur choral society in 1832 for the weekly practice of music of an exclusively sacred character. The first home of the Society was the Gate Chapel in Lincoln's Inn Fields. In 1836 it was granted the use of the larger Exeter Hall, focus of London's dissenting community and designed for religious and charitable meetings. The works of Handel were part of its core repertoire and the society also performed the major new works of Spohr and Mendelssohn, including the London première of Elijah in 1847. At the Handel Festival of 1859 the Sacred Harmonic choir numbered 2765. The Sacred Harmonic Society provided the nucleus for the nationally represented choir of the Trial Festival of 1857 (numbering 2000, with an orchestra of about 400), prior to the Centenary Festival of 1859, which inaugurated the triennial Handel Festival. In 1882, the Society disbanded after losing the use of its Exeter Hall base.
Marion Margaret Scott, born London, 16 Jul 1877; studied violin at the Royal College of Music, 1896-1904; published poetry as Violin verses (Walter Scott, London, 1905); composed music and led her own string quartet; organised concerts of British chamber music, 1900-1920; founded with Gertrude Eaton and Katharine Eggar the Society of Women Musicians, 1911, and served as its President, 1915-1916; published edition of Haydn's Quartet Opus 1 no 1 (Oxford University Press. 1931); published Beethoven, (J M Dent, London, 1934); published editions of songs of Ivor Gurney, 1938, 1952; wrote numerous articles on the life and works of Joseph Haydn; died London, 24 Dec 1953.
Harold Watkins Shaw, born Bradford, 3 April 1911; read history at Wadham College, Oxford, 1929-1932; studied at the Royal College of Music, 1932-1933; awarded the Oxford University Osgood Memorial prize for his dissertation on John Blow, 1936; taught in London; appointed music organizer to Hertfordshire County Council, 1946; appointed Honorary Librarian of St Michael's College, Tenbury, 1948; appointed lecturer at Worcester College of Education, 1949 (retained until retirement); published books on the teaching of music in schools at primary and secondary levels, 1950s; edited his edition of Messiah, 1957-1965; Keeper of the Parry Room library, Royal College of Music, 1971-1980; awarded DLitt in the faculty of music by Oxford University; awarded OBE, 1985; died, Worcester, 8 Oct 1996. Publications (a selection): Music in the Primary School (London, 1952); The Three Choirs Festival c1713-1953 (Worcester and London, 1954); Music in the Secondary School (London, 1961); The Story of Handel's 'Messiah', 1741-1784 (London, 1963); A Textual and Historical Companion to Handel's 'Messiah' (London, 1965); A Study of the Bing-Gostling Part Books in the Library of York Minster together with a Systematic Catalogue (Croydon, 1986) ;The Succession of Organists of the Chapel Royal and the Cathedrals of England and Wales from c.1538 (Oxford, 1991).
The Society of Women Musicians was founded in London in 1911 by the singer Gertrude Eaton, the composer Katharine Eggar and the musicologist Marion M. Scott. It aimed to provide a focal point for women composers and performers to meet and enjoy the benefits of mutual cooperation. The 37 women at the inaugural meeting included musicians such as Ethel Barns, Rebecca Clarke, Agnes Larkcom, Anne Mukle and her sister, May Mukle, and Liza Lehmann, who became the society's first president. Later presidents included Cécile Chaminade, Fanny Davies, Rosa Newmarch, Myra Hess, Astra Desmond and Elizabeth Poston. Early members included Florence Marshall, Maude Valérie White and Ethel Smyth, who was honorary vice-president from 1925 to 1944. Among subsequent honorary vice-presidents were Nadia Boulanger, Imogen Holst, Elisabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy and Fanny Waterman. By the end of its first year the society had formed a choir and a library, given several private concerts and a public concert of members' works (which included the première of the first two movements of Smyth's String Quartet in E minor), hosted a variety of lectures, held a composers' conference and attracted 152 female members and 20 male associates, including Thomas Dunhill and W W Cobbett, who donated the Cobbett Free Library of Chamber Music to the Society in 1918. By 1913 the Society had also formed an orchestra.In the 61 years of its existence, the society campaigned vigorously for the rights of women musicians, especially as members of professional symphony orchestras, and awarded prizes to composers and performers, as well as continuing to organize concerts and meetings. In 1972, the year after its Diamond Jubilee had been celebrated at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the organization disbanded.
The lawyer Lord Thring (1818-1907), renowned for his work as a parliamentary draftsman and innovator in the framing of legislation, served on the Council of the Royal College of Music.
Valley Lasker's early life was closely connected to Gustav Holst. Born in 1885, she was educated at Morley College while Holst was director of music there, and later taught music at St Paul's Girls' School, Hammersmith, as assistant to Holst, who was also head of music. She arranged several works by Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams for piano and was a regular participant in the Whitsun festival established at Thaxted, Essex, by Holst in 1916 for both amateur and professional musicians. She was also a singer in the Whitsuntide Singers, giving concerts for Holst's festivals at Thaxted, Dulwich, Canterbury, Chichester and Bosham. She directed the singers in 1933, as Holst was ill and conducted the choir at the interment of Holst's ashes in Chichester Cathedral in 1934. Following Holst's death, she directed the group, renamed the Holiday Singers, mainly singing at Chichester and Boxgrove, 1937-1957. She retired from the choir in 1958.
The position of Vice Director of the RCM was established in 1978, and was frequently used alongside the offices of Registrar and/or Director of Studies. The post is presently called Deputy Director.
The Associated Board (AB) of the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) and the Royal College of Music (RCM) was established in 1889 following a proposal by Alexander McKenzie, the Principal of the RAM, to establish a joint body to conduct examinations in practical and theoretical musical subjects and publish music and pedagogical materials. In addition to the Principal of the RAM and the Director of the RCM, each institution appointed five other members under the chairmanship of Lord Charles Bruce. The Hon Secretary of the RCM became its Honorary Treasurer, and the Registrar of the RCM became Secretary of the AB. The Board became the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music followed the accession of the Royal Northern College of Music and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama to the Board. The degree of Graduate of the Royal Schools of Music (GRSM) was introduced in 1930.
On the outbreak of World War Two, Bournemouth town council virtually disbanded its municipal orchestra. In response a number of individuals, notably Maisie Aldrich, the daughter of a Christchurch solicitor, formed a small orchestra to perform for the south coast town and surrounding area.
The conductor Reginald Goodall (1901-1990), after a musical education at Lincoln Cathedral, the Hamilton Conservatory and the Royal College of Music, was Organist at St Alban's Holborn, 1929-1936. His unorthodox outlook and Mosleyite political views and sympathies hindered his attempts find employment as a professional conductor and he was unemployed at the start of the war.
Miss Aldrich sought Goodall's assistance with the Wessex Philharmonic and the orchestra performed its first concert on 8 Dec 1939. Thereafter, Goodall directed over 300 concerts over the next three years and two months, and in the process transforming a group of amateur/semi-professional musicians into a competent orchestra, who often peformed works by many modern British composers, and frequently in two concerts a day. A number of the musicians were refugees of German origin, and as foreign nationals were not allowed within five miles of the coast under wartime security measures, the collection documents the efforts to circumvent these rules.
The collection charts the foundation, development and work of the orchestra and provides important biographical material on Goodall, which include his political views as well as his professional activities. On leaving the orchestra in 1943, he spend six months as an army storeman and then joined Sadler's Wells Opera, where he conducted the premiere of Britten's 'Peter Grimes' on 7 Jun 1945. His career thereafter was spent in relative obscurity, but enjoyed a revival in the 1970s with his conducting of Wagner's Ring cycle.
Anne Marie Meyer was born in Berlin into a Jewish family, 1919. She came to Britain with her father and younger brothers in 1933 and attended Bunce Court School in Kent. Unable to fund a university education, she trained as a secretary and started work at the Warburg Institute in London in 1937. From 1939 until her retirement in 1984 she was the Institute's Secretary and Registrar. Although employed as an administrator, Meyer acquired a wide scholarly knowledge in her own right, particularly in relation to classical music and to the history of the Warburg Institute, and her scholarship, knowledge of four languages and editorial skills proved invaluable in the production of the Institute's journal and monographs. She was awarded the MBE in 1983 and became an Honorary Fellow of the Institute in 1984. She died in 2004.
Henri Frankfort was born, 1897; brought up in the Netherlands and served in the Dutch armed forces during the First World War. He later studied at University College London and the British School at Athens and led archaeological excavations in Egypt before taking his PhD from Leiden University in 1927. He subsequently spent several years in Iraq carrying out fieldwork for the University of Chicago, where he became a Professor in 1932; he also held an Extraordinary Professorship at the University of Amsterdam concurrently with the Chicago chair. In 1949 he left the United States to become Professor of the History of Pre-Classical Antiquity at the University of London and Director of the Warburg Institute, a post he retained until his death in 1954. Prominent among his research interests were the religions of Ancient Egypt and the Near East. The art historian Enriqueta Harris was his second wife.
Hilde Schüller was born, 1910 and studied in Vienna, probably under Julius von Schlosser. She emigrated to London in the 1930s and became associated with the Warburg Institute. She married fellow art historian Otto Kurz in 1937. She died 1981. The American poetry critic Marjorie Perloff is her niece.
Aby Moritz Warburg was born in Hamburg, 1866 to a wealthy banking family; instead of entering the family business, he devoted himself to the academic study of art, European civilization and the classical tradition; studied in Bonn, Munich, and in Strasbourg, focusing on archeology and art history; worked in Florence producing studies on single works of art and their wealthy patrons; spent time on the Hopi Indians conducting an ethnological study, 1896; founded the Kultur-wissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (KBW), to serve both as a private collection and as a resource for public education, 1921; visited the United States to document the Native Americans and their mystic traditions using photographs and text; hospitalized, 1921-1924; worked at the KBW, 1924-1929; died 1929.
The Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg grew out of the personal library of Aby Warburg. In 1921, with the help of Fritz Saxl, the library became a research institution in cultural history, and a centre for lectures and publications, affiliated to the University of Hamburg. After Warburg's death in 1929, the further development of the Institute was guided by Saxl. In 1934, under the shadow of Nazism, the institute was relocated from Hamburg to London. It was installed in Thames House in 1934, moving to the Imperial Institute Buildings, South Kensington, in 1937. In 1944 it became associated with the University of London, and in 1994 it became a founding institute of the University of London's School of Advanced Study.
Alfons Barb was born in Vienna. He supported himself working as a goldsmith whilst studying at the University of Vienna and received his doctorate aged 25. He then worked as a museum director for several years until the Anschluss, when he was dismissed under the new racial laws. He moved to England with his young family in 1939 where, after time spent interned as an enemy alien and eight years working as a factory tool fitter, he eventually resumed an academic career. Barb joined the Warburg Institute in 1949 as Assistant Librarian and subsequently served as Librarian (1956-1966). He was an Honorary Fellow of the Institute from 1968 until his death in 1979. He was also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Numismatic Society, and received the Austrian Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst in 1968.
Betty Kurth was born 1878 and educated at the University of Vienna, where she was one of the earliest women students to be admitted; she studied art history and medieval literature and was awarded her doctorate in 1911. After moving to England, her research focused on English medieval art and she became an authority on medieval tapestry and embroidery. She died in an accident in 1948.
Charles Mitchell was born 1912 and educated at Merchant Taylor's School and at St John's College, Oxford. He received his BA in 1934 and a BLitt in 1939, having simultaneously worked as an assistant at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich (1935-1939). He served at the Admiralty and in the Royal Navy during the Second World War before becoming a lecturer at the Warburg Institute. Having previously held two visiting appointments in the United States, he left London permanently in 1960 for a position at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. After leaving Bryn Mawr in 1980, he held several short term profesorial appointments in the eastern United States before finally retiring in 1985. His scholarly interests were wide, but his chief areas of study were Renaissance art and British art of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Daniel Pickering Walker (known as 'Perkin' to friends and colleagues) was born in London, 1914 and educated at Westminster School and at Christ Church, Oxford, receiving his DPhil in 1940; after working for the Foreign Office and in the Intelligence Corps during the Second World War, he lectured and research at University College London for several years; Walker became a Reader at the Warburg Institute, 1961, and was subsequently the Institute's Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition (1975-1981). Much of his research centred on the importance of Christianity and religious belief in the development of European culture. After retirement he was an Honorary Fellow of the Institute until his death in 1985.
Ernst Hans Gombrich was born, 1909 and studied in Vienna. He moved to London in 1936, becoming a Research Assistant at the Warburg Institute. During the Second World War he worked for the BBC, before returning to the Warburg Institute as Senior Research Fellow (1945-1948), Lecturer (1948-1954), Reader (1954-1956), Special Lecturer (1956-1959) and eventually Director (1959-1976). Gombrich also held a chair at University College London (1956-1959), and numerous other appointments. He received a CBE in 1966 and a knighthood in 1972. After his retirement he was an Honorary Fellow of the Warburg Institute until his death in 2001.
Evelyn Mary Jamison was born in Lancashire, 1877 and raised there and in London. As a young woman she attended art school in Paris before going up to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Awarded a research fellowship by Somerville College, Oxford, she spent several years in Rome and Naples. Returning to Oxford, she became Librarian and Bursar (1907-1917) Assistant Tutor (1917-1921) and Tutor and Vice-Principal (1921-1937) at Lady Margaret Hall; she was also a University Lecturer in History (1928-1935). Jamison retired to London aged 60 to concentrate on her edition of the Catalogus Baronum (Baronial Catalogue). She continued to carry out historical research until her death in 1972.
Aby Moritz Warburg was born in Hamburg, 1866 to a wealthy banking family; instead of entering the family business, he devoted himself to the academic study of art, European civilization and the classical tradition; studied in Bonn, Munich, and in Strasbourg, focusing on archeology and art history; worked in Florence producing studies on single works of art and their wealthy patrons; spent time on the Hopi Indians conducting an ethnological study, 1896; founded the Kultur-wissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (KBW), to serve both as a private collection and as a resource for public education, 1921; visited the United States to document the Native Americans and their mystic traditions using photographs and text; hospitalized, 1921-1924; worked at the KBW, 1924-1929; died 1929.
Frances Yates was born in Hampshire, 1899 and studied at the University of London, receiving her MA in 1926. She spent 15 years as a private scholar before becoming successively Editor of Publications (1941-1944), Lecturer (1944-1957) and Reader (1956-1967) at the Warburg Institute. After her retirement she was an Honorary Fellow of the Institute until her death in 1981. Her wide research interests included Shakespeare, Renaissance thought, and many other aspects of European literature and culture. She was created OBE in 1972 and DBE in 1977.
Fritz Saxl was born in Vienna and educated in Vienna and Berlin; librarian at the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg, and after Aby Warburg's death became Director of the Library (1929-1933); oversaw the Warburg Institute's move to London in 1933 and remained Director until his death in 1948; became a naturalized British subject in 1940 and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1944.
Aby Moritz Warburg was born in Hamburg, 1866 to a wealthy banking family; instead of entering the family business, he devoted himself to the academic study of art, European civilisation and the classical tradition; studied in Bonn, Munich, and in Strasbourg, focusing on archeology and art history; worked in Florence producing studies on single works of art and their wealthy patrons; spent time on the Hopi Indians conducting an ethnological study, 1896; founded the Kultur-wissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (KBW), to serve both as a private collection and as a resource for public education, 1921; visited the United States to document the Native Americans and their mystic traditions using photographs and text; hospitalised,1921-1924; worked at the KBW, 1924-1929; died 1929.
The Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg grew out of the personal library of Aby Warburg. In 1921, with the help of Fritz Saxl, the library became a research institution in cultural history, and a centre for lectures and publications, affiliated to the University of Hamburg. After Warburg's death in 1929, the further development of the Institute was guided by Saxl. In 1934, under the shadow of Nazism, the institute was relocated from Hamburg to London. It was installed in Thames House in 1934, moving to the Imperial Institute Buildings, South Kensington, in 1937. In 1944 it became associated with the University of London, and in 1994 it became a founding institute of the University of London's School of Advanced Study.
Gertrud Bing was born in Hamburg and studied at the Universities of Munich and Hamburg. After receiving her doctorate in 1921, she became a librarian at the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg, subsequently serving as Assistant to Aby Warburg (1924-1929). She moved to London with the Warburg Institute in 1933 and became a British citizen in 1946. She was Assistant Director (1944-1954) and then Director (1955-1959) of the Institute, and subsequently an Honorary Fellow until her death in 1964.
Herbert Horne was born in London, 1864 and worked there as an architect, in partnership with A H Mackmurdo, during the 1880s and early 1890s. From the mid 1890s onwards he worked more on Italian art history, moving to Florence permanently in about 1904. He died in 1916.
Karl Krafft was born in Basel, Switzerland, 1900 and studied mathematics at university before becoming a well-known astrologer in the German-speaking world. From the mid-1930s he became popular with the leaders of the Nazi regime and moved to Germany, becoming personal astrologer to Rudolf Hess. He later published a pro-German interpretation of Nostradamus. Krafft fell out of favour during the early 1940s and died of typhus in January 1945.
Leopold David Ettlinger was born in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), where his father was the university librarian, 1913. He studied at the Universities of Halle and Marburg, receiving his doctorate in 1937. He left Germany in 1938 because of his Jewish background and settled in England, working at the Warburg Institute under Fritz Saxl. With other Warburg staff, he was briefly interned on the Isle of Man in 1940 and became a member of the Institute on his release. During 1941-1948 Ettlinger worked as a schoolteacher in Birmingham, before returning to the Warburg Institute as Assistant to the Curator of the Photographic Collection (1948-1950); subsequently he was Assistant Curator (1950-1953) and Curator (1953-1956) of the Photographic Collection, and then a Lecturer at the Institute (1956-1964). From 1959 he was also a Professor at the Slade School of Art, becoming chair of the department in 1966. In 1970 Ettlinger left England for the University of California at Berkeley, where he remained until his retirement in 1980. He died in 1989. His research covered many aspects of art history.
Otto Kurz was born in Vienna, 1908 and studied Art History at the University there. He was a Research Assistant at the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg in Hamburg and the Warburg Institute in London (1933-1943), and subsequently Assistant Librarian (1943-1949) and Librarian (1949-1965) of the Institute, before becoming the Institute's Professor of the History of Classical Tradition (1966-1975). He was also a visting scholar at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem (1964) and Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University (1970-1971). He married Hilde Schüller in 1937. Died 1975.
Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors was born, 1903; educated at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford, of which he became a fellow in 1926; held chairs in Latin at Cambridge (1944-1953) and Oxford (1953-1970); research centred on Latin manuscripts, which he viewed in the context of European cultural history. He became a fellow of the British Academy in 1944 and was knighted in 1963.
Robert Eisler was born and educated in Vienna, receiving his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1904. He subsequently had a successful academic career in Austria and Germany, including time spent as a visiting lecturer in France, Britain and the United States, until the Anschluss in 1938 when he was interned in Dachau concentration camp. Released shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War he came to England and continued his research at Oxford and later in London, though his time in Dachau left him in poor health for the rest of his life. His research interests included classical archaeology, art history and philosophy, as well as various aspects of the history of religious belief and superstition.
Roberto Weiss was born in Milan, 1906 and studied at the University of Oxford, receiving his DPhil in 1938; excepting a period of military service, he taught in the Italian Department at University College London from 1938 (as Professor from 1946) until his death in 1969. He was naturalized as a British subject in 1934.
Siegfried Seligmann was born in Wandsbek (now part of Hamburg), 1870; studied medicine in Freiburg, Strasbourg, Berlin and Munich, qualifying in 1895; chose to specialize in ophthalmology and worked in Berlin for a few years before returning to Hamburg in 1898, where he continued to practise as an eye specialist; married Alice Warburg in 1904. Alongside his medical career, Seligmann became a leading public figure in Hamburg and carried out research into magic and superstition as a private scholar; his 1910 work Der Böse Blick (The Evil Eye) is still considered a classic. He worked as a military doctor during the First World War, resuming his Hamburg practice when hostilities ceased and continuing to work until his death in 1926.
Walter Solmitz was born in Braunschweig (Brunswick), Germany, 1905 and studied at the Universities of Heidelberg, Berlin and Hamburg; alongside his studies in Hamburg, and for some time afterwards, he was a research assistant at the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg (1927-1933); subsequently he became an instructor in Philosophy at the Franz Rosenzweig Foundation in Hamburg; left Germany in the late 1930s and worked for a time in London before going to the United States, where he found employment as a research assistant and teaching fellow at Harvard University, from which he received an MA in 1943. In 1946 he joined the faculty at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, intially to teach German and later as Associate Professor of Philosophy. With the exception of a year as Senior Research Fellow at the Warburg Institute in London, he remained at Bowdoin until his sudden death in 1962.
The Domestic Design collection was begun in the 1950s by staff at the former Hornsey College of Art at a time when books on 19th and early 20th Century architecture and designs could be acquired very cheaply. In the 1960s the acquisitions policy was extended to include trade catalogues of mostly British furnishers, upholsterers and interior decorators, and continues to the present day.
Charles Hasler was a typographer and graphic designer and played a significant role in many high-profile exhibitions, displays, poster campaigns and book publishing in Britain from the mid-1930s to the mid-1980s. His main areas of knowledge and expertise lay in typography and printing techniques (including photography) and to a lesser extent book binding. Throughout his career Charles Hasler lectured in typographic design and history and was involved with the education and professional development of print and graphic designers.
Hasler trained during the early 1930s at the University of London Goldsmith's College School of Art and at the Sir John Cass Institute and Westminster School of Art as well as taking some courses at the London County Coucil. After 4 years war service, he was from 1942 to 1951 an exhibition designer for the Ministry of Information and the Central Office of Information working on displays such as 'Dig For Victory', Make Do and Mend' andNation and the Child'. He was also involved with the travelling displays on the exhibition ship the Campania. After the war Hasler was a senior designer and chairman of the Typographic Panel for the Festival of Britain of 1951. Involved with providing guidelines for standardised typographical styles for signage and for the official publications for the Festival, he designed and produced the influential Specimen of Display Letters for use by Festival architects and designers. He specifically worked on `The Sea and Ships' display.
He then worked as a freelance designer producing posters for the British Transport Commission from the 1940s to the 1960s, during which time he was also a consultant for the printing company Waterlow & Sons Ltd for whom he designed their housestyle. He also designed covers, layouts and occasionally contributed articles for publications such as The Penrose Annual, Architectural Review, and The Complete Imbiber (vols 4 - 12, 1961-1971) for Vista Books, and various companies' trade literature as well as many smaller commissions for company logos. He wrote and published articles about typography and printing technique (both contemporary and historical, particularly Victorian colour printing) and in 1979 his The Royal Arms: its graphic and decorative development, a comprehensive work on the development of the styles and decoration of crests in Britain, was published by Jupiter Books. He passionately collected source material in all of these areas the most general of which remain in his archive at MoDA.
Peggy Angus (1904-1993) was a highly inventive designer of flat patterns, an artist, a committed teacher and a socialist. Her belief that art should be available to all and that patronage was beneficial to the artist influenced her lifelong approach to her practice. Equally, she encouraged every type of artistic activity equally. Although best known for her wallpapers, her earlier ceramic tile designs of the late 1940s to early 1960s are an important and, until now, largely overlooked aspect of her work. Many of her tile designs were commissioned for post-war public buildings by leading English modernist architects. As such they are important examples of ideas that were dominant in architecture and design at this time, a desire to humanise modern architecture through the use of colour, art and a range of building materials. Peggy Angus was a gifted artist and teacher who produced inspired designs for tiles for Carters of Poole and her 'bespoke' wallpapers which were created individually and printed for clients and friends. She was a friend and contemporary of Enid Marx, Barnet Friedmann and Edward Bawden, and was married to the architectural historian Sir J M Richards.
In 1899 a large number of wallpaper firms came together under the umbrella title of Wallpaper Manufacturers' (WPM) and subsequently some of their products were sold under the trademarkCrown'. The archive therefore consists largely of wallpaper pattern books by a variety of manufacturers, collected as part of the group's working records.
The Silver Studio of design was opened in 1880 by Arthur Silver, with the aim of "bringing together a body of men to establish a studio which would be capable of supplying designs for the whole field of fabrics and other materials used in the decoration of the home." He had trained at Reading School of Art and as an apprentice to the freelance designer H W Batley. The Silver Studio became successful: in the early 1890s it was regularly producing more than 500 designs a year and was selling between 170-300 designs yearly, mainly to buyers of the major textile, wallpaper and carpet producer. Silver showed at the Arts and Crafts Society Exhibitions between 1889-1896 and was elected a member of the Royal Society of Arts in 1893. By the time of his early death at 43 in 1896, he had created Britain's most important independent studio, selling to leading manufacturers and stores at home, in America and in Europe. Clients included Liberty's, Turnbull and Stockdale, Sanderson and Warner and Sons Ltd, all of which used the Silver Studio's designs for their own ranges of wallpapers and textiles.
In 1901, Silver's son Reginald (known as Rex) took over direction of the Studio. He ran it until 1963, two years before his death. He kept excellent records, many of which have survived, providing good evidence of the activities of the Studio during these 62 years. The Studio's fortunes fluctuated, partly due to external conditions. In 1914, many of the staff were serving in the forces and the remaining designers were put on half salaries until trading conditions improved. When Rex was called up, the Studio closed for a year. Working hours were cut in 1921 due to the high cost of raw materials, which had a disastrous effect on the textile industry. The size of the Studio varied over the years: there were around 5 staff in 1908, 11 in 1922, and 14 in 1938. During the Second World War, production of domestic textiles and wallpapers virtually ceased and there was only one designer (Frank Price) in the studio. He was joined by another former employee, Lewis Jones, after the war. When Jones died in 1952, Price continued as the Studio's sole designer until the closure of the Studio in 1963. The Studio's most productive periods were 1891-1896 and 1924-1938. During the latter period, the studio produced over 800 designs annually. Between 1940-1962, output averaged only 175 per year.
The Studio was always able to produce work in a variety of styles at any one time. Even though it participated in the latest fashions, such as the Japanesque of the 1880s or the Moderne sunbursts and geometrics of the 1930s, it also continued to offer more traditional, often floral patterns. As a commercial studio it had to satisfy its customers, relatively few of whom were prepared to take a risk with cutting-edge designs. The Studio's output therefore tended to reflect existing trends rather than break new ground. Because the Silver Studio sold its designs to other manufacturers, its name is not well known in its own right. However, its ability to respond to changing fashions in domestic interiors contributed to its commercial success for over eighty years, and the Studio's output provides a vivid insight into changing tastes in the English home throughout this period.
The firm was established as E Atkins in 1879 by Edwin Atkins. The firm originally had factories at Church Row, Bethnal Green, London and in Birmingham. It was incorporated in 1922, with Edwin Atkins, his son Claude Cyril Atkins and George Clifton Sunley as shareholders and directors. It later changed its name to Atcraft Ltd, and moved to a factory at the Atcraft Works, Alperton, Wembley in the 1920s. The product range consited mainly of indoor and garden chairs, occasional and garden tables, hall furniture, bureaux, hammocks and camp beds, cots and playpens, prams and invalid chairs. In later years the firm concentrated almost entirely on producing nursery and garden furniture. The firm ceased trading in the 1980s.
In 1848 Charles Blomfield, Bishop of London, called upon the clergy to establish evening classes to improve the moral, intellectual and spiritual condition of young men in London. In response, the Reverend Charles Mackenzie, instituted the Metropolitan Evening Classes for Young Men in Crosby Hall, Bishopsgate, London, with student fees at one shilling per session. Subjects on the original curriculum included Greek, Latin, Hebrew, English, History, Mathematics, Drawing and Natural Philosophy. This fledgling college came under royal patronage following the visit of Prince Albert to the classes in 1851. In 1860 the classes moved to Sussex Hall, the former Livery Hall of the Bricklayers' Company, in Leadenhall Street. By this time, some 800 students were enrolled annually.
In 1861 the classes were reconstituted and named the City of London College. Over the next twenty years, the College was one of the pioneers in the introduction of commercial and technical subjects. The College built new premises in White Street at a cost of £16,000 (contributions were received from Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales) and were opened in 1881. In 1891 the College joined the Birkbeck Institute and the Northampton Institute to form the notional City Polytechnic by a Charity Commissioners' scheme to facilitate funding for these institutions by the City Parochial Foundation, and to enable the three institutions to work cooperatively. However this attempted federation did not function in practice, as each institution continued to operate more or less independently. The City Polytechnic concept was dissolved in 1906, and the City of London of College came under the supervision of London County Council.
In December 1940 the College's building was destroyed by a German air raid. The College subsequently moved into premises at 84 Moorgate in January 1944. (During the intervening years, the College students had been accommodated by the City Literary Institute and the Sir John Cass Technical Institute; the latter being another of London Metropolitan University's earliest precursor institutions). The College celebrated its centenary in 1948 with a service of thanksgiving addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury at St Paul's Cathedral. In 1970 the College merged with Sir John Cass College to form the City of London Polytechnic.