Cooper Hewitt says...
Based in the Hammersmith section of west London, the Silver Studio was from its inception a commercial design business, specializing in designs for textiles, wall coverings, and floor coverings as well as metalwork and plasterwork. Founded in 1880 by Arthur Silver (English, 1853–1896), the business sold its designs to those manufacturers and retailers in Great Britain, France, Belgium, and the United States that specifically served a range of middle-class households. [1] From the beginning, Silver ran his business with an emphasis on producing fashionable designs suitable for mass production. Armed with a thorough understanding of the factory floor and ever mindful of the latest ideas and trends, Silver was able to steer his operation to respond quickly in its production of some of the most successful and commercially profitable designs for interior fabrics and wallpapers all while satisfying the most discerning of critics. [2] It was this mindset that made the Silver Studio one of the largest design studios in Great Britain (1880–1963).
Under Arthur Silver during the 1880s and early 1890s, the Silver Studio designed in a range of popular revival styles from Jacobean to French Second Empire that was aided in part by his impressive of library of reference books and portfolios. Silver was especially fond of Japanese design and collected folios of Japanese prints. With the rise of public interest in home decor during the 1880s, Silver expanded his offerings by introducing Japanese-inspired wallpapers to a more avant-garde audience. However, some of the most profitable designs were those imitative of William Morris’s hand-block printed wallpapers and textiles, which were prohibitively expensive for many. Silver served this market with high-quality machine-printed versions, providing those eager for the popular Morris designs with a more affordable version. And like William Morris, Silver also mined the collections at the Victoria & Albert for inspiration, the result being seemingly limitless supply of flat, decorative designs of flowers and plants with curvilinear leaves. By 1895, the Silver Studio’s output was predominantly dedicated to the production of English Art Nouveau designs which were sold to more than a dozen clients including Liberty & Company, GP & J Baker, Sanderson, Stead McAlpin, and Jeffrey & Company.
In addition to the William Morris-style designs, Art Nouveau designs would prove to be bestsellers for the Studio, and the business sold thousands of these designs between 1895 and 1910. [3] After Arthur Silver’s premature death in 1896, designer Harry Napper (English, 1860–1930) managed the Studio for an interim period before Arthur's son Rex Silver (English, 1879–1965) took control of the business from 1901 until it closed in 1963. While several designs by Harry Napper, John Illingworth Kay, Archibald Knox, and C.F.A. Voysey have been identified, the company contracted so many different designers during its long history that a majority of their designs remain unattributed today.
The Silver Studio remained a family business for decades, but much of the Silver Studio’s creative energy dissipated once the vogue for Art Nouveau design had faded. Rex Silver put the Silver Studio on a more conservative track and returned to the historic styles of the past by producing accurate reproduction textiles. After the Silver Studio closed in 1963, Mary Peerless, Rex Silver’s stepdaughter gave the Silver Studio archive of more than 30,000 objects to the Hornsey College of Art, which today is Middlesex University. The Silver Studio collection is housed at the University’s Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture (MoDA), which is scheduled to close later this year (2023-2024). Middlesex University is presently seeking a new home for the collection objects and ephemera. Outside of Middlesex University, the largest collection of Silver Studio designs is at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
[1] Mark Turner and Lesley Hoskins, Silver Studio of Design: A Design and Source Book for Home Decoration (Exeter, Devon: Webb & Bower; London: M. Joseph, 1988), 7.
[2] Zoë Hendon, “The Silver Studio art reference collection,” The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society, 1850–the Present, no. 36 (2012), 66.
[3] Mark Turner with Lesley Hoskins, Juliet Kinchin, and William Ruddick, Art Nouveau Designs from the Silver Studio Collection, 1885-1910 (London: Middlesex Polytechnic, 1986), 8.
