Kenton - The furniture

The makers employed included William Hall, the foreman who also made furniture for Voysey. Another cabinet maker, Augustus H. Mason had made a cabinet for Gimson shown at 1890 Arts and Crafts exhibition. He later set up own workshop at Chiswick and made items for other Arts and Crafts designers such as John Paul Cooper. Other makers were G. Bellamy, A. Bowen, and J. Urand.

There was no house style among the designers of Kenton and Company. The furniture designed by Blomfield and Macartney were more traditional in their forms and construction reflecting their interest in eighteenth-century styles. Barnsley’s designs, including a series of inlaid mirror frames with domed tops, were influenced by his recent study of Byzantine art. Lethaby’s designs included variations on country furniture such as two chests, one inlaid with sheep, the other with sailing ships.

 

They held the first exhibition of their work in London in July 1891. Gimson missed the opening of the show on 28 July, preferring to continue his sketching tour in Somerset and Devon. He wrote:

 

Gimson is known to have designed the following pieces for Kenton and Company:

 

·         An inlaid mahogany cabinet now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

This cabinet has a simple four-square outline emphasised by inlaid diagonal stringing in dark and light wood. Gimson has used the stringing as he saw it used on English and Dutch sixteenth-century chests, about 1cm wide and inlaid right on the edge of the furniture. He subsequently refined this motif down to a narrower band inlaid in from the edge of the furniture. The inlaid design is clumsier than his later work.

 

·         A marquetry cabinet now at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris

This is a very bold design combining a simple outline with rich surface decoration reminiscent of the inlaid Indian boxes which Gimson admired. The marquetry inlay in cherry, ebony and palm looks jazzy but was based on the fourteenth-century frescoes in Berkeley Church, Gloucestershire which Gimson had sketched

 

·         Six mahogany chairs, examples are now at the following institutions: Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum; the Crafts Study Centre, Farnham and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

 

·         A dresser in unpolished oak with a chamfered plate rack now in a private collection. This piece is similar to the country furniture designed by Lethaby. It was described in  contemporary source:

'Mr Gimson’s sideboard in plain untreated wood goes admirably with the pewter plates displayed on it and the whole would be very suitable for an aesthetic kitchen. but for a dining room it is somewhat of an affectation of cottage style and the wood would get very dirty looking in time.'

 

·         A walnut cabinet, present whereabouts unknown

This was probably a cabinet on a stand similar to the V&A cabinet. This was one of the pieces left unsold and divided up among the participants when the firm was disbanded. It was allotted to Lethaby who described it as, ‘left clean and unpolished but, but now mellow and glossy from use.’

 

Kenton and Company held the second exhibition of its work for a week in December 1891 in central London. Sales totalled £700 and it was a critical success. 15 years later in his book ‘Craftsmanship in Competitive Industry’ Ashbee described it as:

 

The firm was wound up in June 1892. Finances were short and for the five young men involved, ‘the time had come to make a choice between the practice of architecture and the practice of designing and making furniture’.