Cooper: Designer and Craftsmen

Early in the 1890s Cooper began modelling plaster panels initially to Wilson's design. This first involvement in handwork inspired him to design a series of boxes and frames decorated in gesso, a mixture of resin, linseed oil, and glue added to plaster of Paris or whiting (powdered chalk). A craftsman made up Cooper's designs in wood, and he and later his future wife, May Oliver, modelled the gesso decoration in relief. Cooper wanted to understand the nature of the materials he was working with and was obsessed by their symbolic properties. In 1898 he started using shagreen because he was entranced by its translucency; he compared the pattern of concentric rings on the shark’s skin to a pool of green water. He used shagreen with silver mounts to cover boxes and other small items.

He made an impact as a designer and craftsman in 1899, sending his first piece of metalwork and four pieces of shagreen to the Arts and Crafts Exhibition and offering his designs to Montgue Fordham who ran a shop and workshop in London's West End. Between 1899 and 1915 Cooper sold over 275 pieces of shagreen and metalwork through Fordham's shop and its successor, the Artificers' Guild. His first piece of jewellery, a silver and mother-of-pearl belt buckle, was completed in 1900.

Cooper employed able craftspeople who made a major contribution to his work. One such craftsman, Lorenzo Colarossi, worked for him from 1899. He and George Romer accompanied Cooper to Birmingham and taught alongside him at the School of Art. Cooper's wife, May Oliver, also worked with him taking charge of the workshop in his absence. Their son, Francis, was to become a skilled metalworker working with his father from 1924.

As a teacher of metalwork, Cooper pioneered the return to basic silversmithing skills. No student's design was accepted unless the designer had the skill to make it. He believed that craftspeople, 'should learn what they can do well, improve their methods & invent new ones'. As late as 1929, when contemporaries were criticised for producing worn out forms, his designs were praised for their freshness by The Times because, 'he appears to think in silver'.