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Gardiner, Edward (1903-1958)

Gardiner, Edward

Daneway, Gloucestershire and Leamington, Warwickshire; chair maker (fl.1903-d.1958)

Edward Gardiner was a self-taught chair maker who worked for much of his career for Ernest Gimson. By 1903 Gimson was unable to fulfil orders for the turned chairs which he made himself at Pinbury, and after unsuccessful attempts at sub-contracting the work, he turned to the Daneway timber merchant and mill owner, Edward Gardiner snr., about placing a lathe in his sawmill. Gardiner’s son, Edward H. G., began teaching himself joinery and wood turning and also learned from talking to the woodworker and blacksmith, William Bucknell, as well as the wood turners at Workman Brothers at Woodchester, near Stroud. Gardiner then set up workshops with Gimson as a partner, each man taking 10 per cent from the profits. Gimson provided the designs, the earliest of which were dated August and September 1903.  

Examples of Gardiner's chairs, designed and exhibited by Ernest Gimson, at the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, London, in 1906 and 1910, included the following:

1906 – armchair with high back, price £1 (cat. no. 331); turned ash chairs, price £1 18s and £1 7s 6d respectively (590 & 591)

1910 – turned ash chair, price 7s 6d (cat. no. 325); turned ash chair, price £1 (348); turned ash chair, price 10s (350)

Gardiner became very successful in chair making and he, in turn, passed the craft onto several assistants. Among Gardner’s commissions were chairs for the W. H. Smith Memorial Hall and Working Men’s Club in 1906; 120 chairs for the Village Hall in Wootton Fitzpaine, Somerset, supplied at 6s 6d each plus 9d each for staining green [design illus. Carruthers, Greensted, Roscoe (2019), p. 229]; and the bobbin-turned chairs made 1905-11 [illus. same publication, p. 96].

In 1913 Gimson’s direct involvement with chair making ended as the chair makers, including Edward Gardiner, moved to Cubbington, near Leamington. However, Gimson continued to recommend them for ‘chairs for chapels that want something a little more Christian than the sweated High Wycombe industries can produce’. Indeed, Gimson praised Gardiner in a letter to the architect, Robert Weir Schultz, dated 28 October 1913 when he wrote: ‘My chairmakers have left Daneway Mill & gone to Cubbington, near Leamington where they have all provision for bending, steaming & drying wood. There couldn’t be a better chairmaker than Edward Gardiner & he is anxious to develop the work as a branch of his timber merchanting’.

Writing later of his initiation into the craft of chair making, Gardiner said ‘After making but a few chairs in plain turning Mr Gimson brought down his first design for a beaded settee. I was much disquieted by this as being only a beginner Mr Gimson was treating me like an experienced craftsman and I was not at all sure I could rise to it’. An example of this settee was exhibited at Debenham & Freebody’s in 1907, along with turned chairs. Gardiner spent his life trying to refine his chair making skills and said in April 1954 that Gimson was not a good chair maker, probably because the latter liked a more ‘lively’ finish and not the refined style to which Gardiner aspired. After Philip Clissett’s death in 1913 it is probable that Gimson added the ‘Clissett’ chair to the range produced by Gardiner. 

In 1920 Sidney Barnsley commissioned Gardiner to make 60 ‘Pass’ chairs for the Memorial Library at Bedales School, a project Barnsley had taken over on Gimson’s death. These chairs cost 25s each. Gardiner employed several assistants over the years, including Bill Clark until the 1940s, Hugh Birkett during the Second World War, and Victor Neal, who made rush seating for him from the 1950s. Neal’s son, Neville, became a pupil of Gardiner’s from 1939 and took over on his death, and was followed in turn by his son, Lawrence, who has been in charge since 1992.

Gardiner continued working into his seventies and died in 1958.

A yew armchair with rush seat of turned and pegged construction, c. 1920s, part of set of 7 or 8 chairs bought by Gordon Russell for his house, Kingcombe, near Chipping Campden, is now at the Cheltenham Museum [illus. Carruthers & Greensted (1994), p. 89]. Two ash ‘Pass’ armchairs designed by Gimson in 1907 and made by Gardiner in about 1907-30 are also at Cheltenham [illus. Carruthers & Greensted (1994), p. 91].

Sources: Lambourne, Utopian Craftsmen (1980); Carruthers & Greensted, Good Citizen’s Furniture (1994); Whittaker, ‘On the Border: Barn Close and the evolution of the Arts and Crafts interior, 1902-1931’, The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the Present (2018); Carruthers, Greensted, Roscoe, Ernest Gimson. Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect (2019); review of the Arts & Crafts Exhibition catalogues, 1888-1916.