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Description area
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History
Henry Cole was born in Bath in 1808, at the age of 15 he began working for the public records historian and eventually became assistant keeper of the Public Records Office. In response to Prince Albert's Society of Arts competition in 1845, Cole designed a tea service using the pseudonym Felix Summerley which was subsequently manufactured by Minton and embodied his ideas of combining form with function. Following the success of the tea service, in 1847 Cole founded Summerley's Art Manufactures which enabled artists and sculptors to design for industry. Two years later, in 1849, Cole and the painter Richard Redgrave founded The Journal of Design and Manufactures. By this time Cole was involved in the arrangements for the Great Exhibition of 1851 which would display "art applied to industry" through exhibits from around the world. The success of the Great Exhibition encouraged better design schooling in England and in 1852 the Board of Trade set up a department of practical art with Cole as joint secretary, with Lyon Playfair (1818-1898), in this capacity he formed the nucleus of the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 1858 he became sole secretary and in 1873 resigned his secretaryship. He was made Knight Commander of the Bath in 1875 and died in London in 1882.