Kenton & Company – Setting up the firm

The emphasis on practical involvement in building and craftwork from both Sedding’s office and the Anti-scrape circle fostered a desire among Gimson and his fellow-architects to escape what Lethaby described as, ‘the deathly dreariness of the respectable offices, with framed ‘perspectives’ on the walls and clerks slaving in the background’.

On 22 June 1890 Gimson wrote:

‘Lethaby, Blow and I are joining together in a little business. We are going to take a shop in Bloomsbury for the sale of furniture of our own design and make, besides other things such as plaster friezes, leadwork and needlework etc etc.

We are all to have bedrooms and offices in the same building and to share expenses.’

Initially the three young men had been looking for a cottage in the country to form the centre of a semi-permanent/weekend craft community. William Lethaby and Detmar Blow were architects like Gimson, fellow-members of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and friends. Lethaby trained in Barnstaple and worked in the Midlands before joining Norman Shaw’s office while Blow had connections with Sedding’s office and worked with Gimson at the plasterworkers, Whitcombe and Priestlys.

The scheme developed in October when two other more established architects joined the scheme. Reginald Blomfield had set up as architect in 1883. He and Mervyn Macartney had tried unsuccessfully to persuade furniture manufacturers to exhibit at the Third Arts and Crafts Exhibition in 1890 and saw the furniture shop scheme as a way to revitalize the industry. Blow dropped out and Sidney Barnsley, who was studying Byzantine architecture in Greece, was persuaded to join.

The firm took the name of Kenton and Company with premises in Brownlow Mews near Guildford Street, London. Kenton Street which provided the name of the firm was round the corner. It was registered as a company in February 1891 with capital of £3000 divided into 300 shares of £10. Four of the members, Barnsley, Blomfield, Gimson and Macartney each took 15 shares, Lethaby took 13 shares. Colonel Harold Malet, an artistic ex-military man, took 20 shares and the designer, Stephen Webb, who was a short-lived member of the firm, took 8 shares. Macartney was elected chairman with Barnsley as company secretary.