Cooper Hewitt says...
Gordon Mitchell Forsyth is one of the founding fathers of the art pottery movement in the United Kingdom. Born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1879, Forsyth began his formal training at the Royal College of Art in London. He attended William Richard Lethaby’s School of Art and Design, which was founded on the principles of both John Ruskin and William Morris. Taking to heart these philosophies of the Arts and Crafts movement, Forsyth wished to create pottery that was both beautiful and useful, as he felt that so many mass-produced objects were beset by “a conglomeration of hideousness” with “no design or sense of order.” Forsyth first had a chance to test out his design theories when he was hired in 1903 as the director of the Minton Hollins pottery company. The following year, Forsyth exhibited a large-scale sculptural tilework for his company (painted in bright, cloisonné glazes), depicting the figure of St. Louis for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Later, in 1906, Forsyth became the director of Pilkington’s Lancastrian Pottery & Tiles Company, where he was influential in founding their art pottery studio. Of particular note are the tiles that Forsyth designed for the bathrooms of the S.S. Titanic while with Pilkington's.
After leaving Pilkington’s in 1919, Forsyth later influenced generations of English ceramists by teaching at the Stoke-on-Trent Art Schools. In 1920, he became the art advisor to the British Pottery Manufacturing Federation, a post he would hold for 24 years. Later in his life, Forsyth would take on the medium of stained glass windows and he created windows for churches and civic buildings across England.
