RARE PAIR ANTIQUE C1875 BENHAM & FROUD? FIRE ANDIRONS DOGS BRASS DRESSER?

Description: Photos to follow tomorrow…..sorry…..!! 👀RARE ANTIQUE C1875 BENHAM & FROUD? FIRE ANDIRONS DOGS BRASS C DRESSER?. This listing is for a stylish pair arts & crafts aesthetic movement, brass fire dogs andirons….most likely designed by Dr Christopher Dresser and made …..quite possibly by Benham & Froud and dating from around 1875. These definitely have the look, age and style of the aforesaid maker and designer…(for the buyer to do research.) The fire dogs stand raised on a TRIPLE round legs each end of the central rest which is a shaped bar rest for fire tools across the top. The fire dogs are not marked. (If you know more information…I would love to know please.) MEASUREMENTS; Height 7” x width 6” x length 7” approx. CONDITION: Excellent antique condition. Left with original patina. No damage. RESEARCH NOTES: DR CHRISTOPHER DRESSER Among the first of the independent industrial designers, Christopher Dresser championed design reform in 19th century Britain while embracing modern manufacturing in the development of wallpaper, textiles, ceramics, glass, furniture and metalware. To say he was ahead of time is something of an understatement. His radical designs were a breath of fresh air in the weighty and sombre world of late Victorian style. Considered an early pioneer of what would become the 20th Century style his work is greatly admired and collected all over the world. By the end of the 19th Century Dr Christopher Dresser was a household name, who was famed for his extensive array of industrial designs used for furnishing ordinary people with well-made, efficient and engaging goods. Over his career he designed literally hundreds of objects including textiles, wall coverings, ceramics, glassware and metalware. His commercial success is all the more remarkable as Dresser also pioneered what we now recognise as the simple modern aesthetic. Radical for the time, some of Dresser’s products, notably his 1880s metal toast racks, are still in production today. Born in Glasgow in 1834 into a non-conformist family, Dresser was an exceptionally talented child. At the age of 13, he won a place at the newly established Government School of Design. This new system of art training was set up to improve the standard of British design for industry by joining the disciplines of art and science. Having specialised in botanical studies, Dresser became a lecturer in botany when he left the College in 1854. However after failing to win the Chair of Botany at the University of London in 1860, Dresser turned his efforts towards design – setting up a studio at his home in St Peter Square, Hammersmith. This study of plants had a profound effect on his approach to design. Seeing nothing superfluous in nature, where every beautiful thing had simplicity of form and a clear function, Dresser applied the same principle to design. By 1868 Dresser had a number of roles: working as a designer, an advisor to manufacturers, and as an author and teacher. Increasingly successful, he moved to a large house in the fashionable and artistic Campden Hill area of London in 1869. By 1871 Dresser declared that “as an ornamentalist I have much the largest practice in the kingdom” and produced designs for wallpaper, textiles, stained glass, ceramics and metalware. Dresser also became a passionate advocate of Japanese culture and was partly responsible for the cult of Japan that raged through Western artistic circles during the 1880s. In 1876, he became the first European designer to be commissioned to visit Japan, which had reopened its borders in 1854, in order to view craft and manufacturing techniques for the UK government. Much of Dresser’s most influential work was produced from the late 1870s when he worked increasingly as an adviser and designer to smaller firms which allowed him greater control over a range of products. While he still provided designs anonymously, his stature was so great that many manufacturers now used Dresser’s name as a marketing ploy. The ceramics he designed for the Linthorpe Art Pottery had a facsimile signature impressed on the base. Some of his electro-plate designs for Hukin and Heath bore the mark Designed by Dr C. Dresser and the modest tin wares produced by Richard Perry, Son & Co., were marked Dr Dresser’s design. At a time when the fast-expanding Victorian middle classes were enthusiastically furnishing their homes, Dresser designed all the effects necessary for the family table: claret jugs, tea services, serving dishes, toast racks, candlesticks and cruet sets. He received contracts to design silver and electroplate for Hukin & Heath of Birmingham and for James Dixon & Sons of Sheffield in the late 1870s. Dresser’s designs were radical in the context of a period when many designs combined a heady mix of cultures and periods with the highly decorative Rococo revival style dominating silverware. His reduced, geometric forms revealed the influence of Japanese and Islamic silverware and a desire to be economic with the use of costly materials. Maintaining an acute awareness of function, Dresser also became adept at utilising standardised components for handles and lids to reduce costs for manufacturers. In 1880 Dresser was appointed art manager for the newly established Art Furnishers’ Alliance founded to “carry on the business of manufacturing, buying and selling high-class goods of artistic design”. A shop was opened at 157 New Bond Street, London, supplying “everything for the home” with all items either designed or approved by Dresser. This was the pinnacle of Dresser’s design career and the Alliance had financial backing from most of his manufacturers including A. Lasenby Liberty, founder of the Liberty store. Despite positive reviews, the Alliance went into liquidation in 1883. It is thought that the initial capital was inefficient to fund the project and that the design of the wares was too advanced in taste for the time. Liberty acquired most of the stock and assumed the Alliance’s role as the leading retailer of “modern taste”. Dresser returned to designing surface pattern for manufacturers, mostly for textiles and wallpapers. Although he never regained the renown of the early 1880s, Dresser continued to run his studio and produced designs for another twenty years until his death in 1904. His achievements were great – not only in his fresh and exciting body of work, but also in his total commitment to and understanding of machine manufacturing. Christopher Dresser strove to produce the best design he could using industrial processes and this confidence in new technology led the way for future designers. Towards the end of Christopher Dresser’s life, a tribute appeared in an 1899 issue of Studio magazine describing him as “perhaps the greatest of commercial designers, imposing his fantasy and invention upon the ordinary output of British industry.” : Field guide to Benham I’m covering both Benham & Sons and Benham & Froud in the same field guide because the two firms are related. Some online sources maintain that the companies were separate entities but that is not the case. I was quite fortunate to come across a wonderful writeup on London Street Views with thorough and sourced research that lays out the history of these two firms. I urge you to read that excellent article and the author deserves all the credit and praise for correcting the record. I will restate those facts briefly in the History section below to set the chronology and will focus my own effort on the copper itself. I am also indebted to reader Roger W., who has reviewed and assisted with research for this guide. History In 1821, John Lee Benham (1785-1864) founded J. L. Benham, Ironmongers, selling products from his father’s blacksmith shop on Blackfriars Road in London. He did well enough so that in 1824 he moved the business to 19 Wigmore Street on Cavendish Square, where he set up his own ironworks. According to a history written by Stanley Benham, “the workshops were in the basement and cellars, the showroom was on the ground floor and John Lee lived on the first floor.” He married twice and had eight children — three daughters and five sons. Four of his sons worked in the family business and by the 1850s the firm was a thriving metalworks that had expanded into the neighboring buildings to manufacture bathtubs, stove grate and kitchen ranges, and hot water systems. By the 1860s, the street numbering on Wigmore Street changed, and the family’s sprawling ironworks adopted 66 Wigmore Street as its storefront address. Field guide to "Benham" In 1855, John Lee and his son Augustus (1826-1884) formed a partnership with Joseph William Froud to purchase the R. & E. Kepp metalsmith on Chandos Street. That firm, founded in 1785 by Joseph Kepp, had gained prominence in 1821 by winning a high-profile project: the replacement of the orb-and-cross ornament atop the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The new ornament made by the Kepps measured 23 feet (7 meters) tall and weighed 7 tons (6350kg). It was well-built indeed — it still adorns the dome to this day — and the Kepps proudly adopted the orb and cross as the company’s logo. When the Benhams and Joseph Froud took over the business in 1855, they renamed it Benham & Froud but kept the orb and cross as the company’s symbol. Eight years later, in 1863, Augustus and Joseph amicably bought out John Lee’s share of Benham & Froud. John Lee passed away in 1864 at age 79 and his sons James and Frederick took over direction of the firm, by now renamed to Benham & Sons. Twenty years later, in 1885, James Benham passed away. Frederick made a series of ill-fated business decisions that created financial stress, and after Frederick died in 1891, the family took the family firm public to raise funds. That is when Benham & Sons became Benham & Sons Ltd. However, internal family disagreements continued and in 1907 the firm was reorganized again. The head office remained at 66 Wigmore Street but the manufacturing facilities were moved to more spacious quarters out of the center of London. The two World Wars in Europe created more demand for the company’s products and the firm recovered and established offices in New York, Cape Town, and Sydney. The Benhams sold the firm in 1959, and though the name survived, that marked the end of family management of the firm. On the Benham & Froud side, Augustus Benham passed away in 1884, within a year of his brother James. The company went public and became Benham & Froud Ltd. The company described itself as a general metalworking company with an emphasis on fine detailed work and had a workshop behind the main shop on Chandos Street as well as a second workshop at 98-99 St Martin’s Lane. In 1906 (some sources say 1913) the firm was taken over by Herbert Benham & Company and relocated to Ramillies Place in Great Marlborough. The last records of that business are in 1924. The question I’ve always had is, what’s the difference between these two companies? Now that I know their shared history — or rather, that Benham & Froud was an offshoot of Benham & Sons — I am even more curious. How did these two enterprises co-exist? After poking around for a bit, I have a theory. Benham & Sons was first and foremost an ironmonger and I believe their central focus remained on large industrial products: boilers, heating and refrigeration, gas systems, steam-powered engines for municipal water supply, and the like. I think Benham & Froud was spun off as a coppersmith for the consumer market: smaller, more detailed products with an emphasis on design, that required a different skill set from casting, forging, and engineering industrial machinery. In support of this theory, from 1873 to 1893 Benham & Froud commissioned a series of product designs from Christopher Dresser (1834-1904), an early English designer who produced hundreds of original concepts for housewares, textiles, and ceramics. His 19th century designs were so modern that they are often mischaracterized as Art Deco, but he predated that era by decades. For Benham & Froud, Dresser designed tea kettles, candlesticks, lamps, fireplace andirons, and other household items over a period of twenty years — a substantial collaboration that produced objects of great beauty and surprising permanence. I think the two Benham firms were complementary, not competitive. There are many examples of copper cookware with stamps from both companies, and I suspect this is because when Benham & Sons won contracts as a “kitchen outfitter” they turned to Benham & Froud to supply a set of pots and pans. But this does not appear to be an exclusive relationship: reader Roger W. has also seen copper with the Benham & Sons stamp that is clearly French in make, and so likely sourced from the continent instead. For its part, Benham & Froud also appears to have sold its copper through a range of retailers including Harrods and Temple & Crook. After reading the history of the two firms and considering the range of copper products carrying their marks, I see father-and-son firms that grew apart over decades but never turned against each other. And now to the purpose of this post — the copper itself. : Field guide to Benham I’m covering both Benham & Sons and Benham & Froud in the same field guide because the two firms are related. Some online sources maintain that the companies were separate entities but that is not the case. I was quite fortunate to come across a wonderful writeup on London Street Views with thorough and sourced research that lays out the history of these two firms. I urge you to read that excellent article and the author deserves all the credit and praise for correcting the record. I will restate those facts briefly in the History section below to set the chronology and will focus my own effort on the copper itself. I am also indebted to reader Roger W., who has reviewed and assisted with research for this guide. History In 1821, John Lee Benham (1785-1864) founded J. L. Benham, Ironmongers, selling products from his father’s blacksmith shop on Blackfriars Road in London. He did well enough so that in 1824 he moved the business to 19 Wigmore Street on Cavendish Square, where he set up his own ironworks. According to a history written by Stanley Benham, “the workshops were in the basement and cellars, the showroom was on the ground floor and John Lee lived on the first floor.” He married twice and had eight children — three daughters and five sons. Four of his sons worked in the family business and by the 1850s the firm was a thriving metalworks that had expanded into the neighboring buildings to manufacture bathtubs, stove grate and kitchen ranges, and hot water systems. By the 1860s, the street numbering on Wigmore Street changed, and the family’s sprawling ironworks adopted 66 Wigmore Street as its storefront address. Field guide to "Benham" In 1855, John Lee and his son Augustus (1826-1884) formed a partnership with Joseph William Froud to purchase the R. & E. Kepp metalsmith on Chandos Street. That firm, founded in 1785 by Joseph Kepp, had gained prominence in 1821 by winning a high-profile project: the replacement of the orb-and-cross ornament atop the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The new ornament made by the Kepps measured 23 feet (7 meters) tall and weighed 7 tons (6350kg). It was well-built indeed — it still adorns the dome to this day — and the Kepps proudly adopted the orb and cross as the company’s logo. When the Benhams and Joseph Froud took over the business in 1855, they renamed it Benham & Froud but kept the orb and cross as the company’s symbol. Eight years later, in 1863, Augustus and Joseph amicably bought out John Lee’s share of Benham & Froud. John Lee passed away in 1864 at age 79 and his sons James and Frederick took over direction of the firm, by now renamed to Benham & Sons. Twenty years later, in 1885, James Benham passed away. Frederick made a series of ill-fated business decisions that created financial stress, and after Frederick died in 1891, the family took the family firm public to raise funds. That is when Benham & Sons became Benham & Sons Ltd. However, internal family disagreements continued and in 1907 the firm was reorganized again. The head office remained at 66 Wigmore Street but the manufacturing facilities were moved to more spacious quarters out of the center of London. The two World Wars in Europe created more demand for the company’s products and the firm recovered and established offices in New York, Cape Town, and Sydney. The Benhams sold the firm in 1959, and though the name survived, that marked the end of family management of the firm. On the Benham & Froud side, Augustus Benham passed away in 1884, within a year of his brother James. The company went public and became Benham & Froud Ltd. The company described itself as a general metalworking company with an emphasis on fine detailed work and had a workshop behind the main shop on Chandos Street as well as a second workshop at 98-99 St Martin’s Lane. In 1906 (some sources say 1913) the firm was taken over by Herbert Benham & Company and relocated to Ramillies Place in Great Marlborough. The last records of that business are in 1924. The question I’ve always had is, what’s the difference between these two companies? Now that I know their shared history — or rather, that Benham & Froud was an offshoot of Benham & Sons — I am even more curious. How did these two enterprises co-exist? After poking around for a bit, I have a theory. Benham & Sons was first and foremost an ironmonger and I believe their central focus remained on large industrial products: boilers, heating and refrigeration, gas systems, steam-powered engines for municipal water supply, and the like. I think Benham & Froud was spun off as a coppersmith for the consumer market: smaller, more detailed products with an emphasis on design, that required a different skill set from casting, forging, and engineering industrial machinery. In support of this theory, from 1873 to 1893 Benham & Froud commissioned a series of product designs from Christopher Dresser (1834-1904), an early English designer who produced hundreds of original concepts for housewares, textiles, and ceramics. His 19th century designs were so modern that they are often mischaracterized as Art Deco, but he predated that era by decades. For Benham & Froud, Dresser designed tea kettles, candlesticks, lamps, fireplace andirons, and other household items over a period of twenty years — a substantial collaboration that produced objects of great beauty and surprising permanence. I think the two Benham firms were complementary, not competitive. There are many examples of copper cookware with stamps from both companies, and I suspect this is because when Benham & Sons won contracts as a “kitchen outfitter” they turned to Benham & Froud to supply a set of pots and pans. But this does not appear to be an exclusive relationship: reader Roger W. has also seen copper with the Benham & Sons stamp that is clearly French in make, and so likely sourced from the continent instead. For its part, Benham & Froud also appears to have sold its copper through a range of retailers including Harrods and Temple & Crook. After reading the history of the two firms and considering the range of copper products carrying their marks, I see father-and-son firms that grew apart over decades but never turned against each other. And now to the purpose of this post — the copper itself. If you need more photos or information please message me...🤗 PLEASE READ: I try to describe all the items as accurately and as honestly as possible, and I always include photos or scans of the actual items. My items are usually vintage or antique, very rarely new, and condition will sometimes reflect this with minor marks, wear on gilding etc. Anything major such as cracks chips or major loss of gilding etc will be pointed out in the description and shown on the photos If you are still unsure as to the condition etc. please ask questions or request more photos BEFORE bidding or buying ***Please keep in mind, I am not an expert, but an enthusiastic collector. I do my best to research the item and its history and pass that information on to my customers, you can google items and find the same information I do. If you know anything of interest that I have not included I am always interested to learn. Vintage or pre-owned items will often show some signs of wear due to their age, and there may be something I overlooked. There can be naturally occurring manufacturer's defects, slight surface scratching, or wear consistent with normal use. Any condition outside normal vintage wear, like chips or cracks or serious defaults, will be noted.*** POSTAGE: International buyers please note: N.B. The Global Shipping Programme does not allow sellers to send combined purchases as one item, but you can, if you require more than one item put them in your basket to achieve a joint invoice. For multiple purchases please contact before committing to buy, to make sure the items can be sent in the same parcel. l dont ship directly out side the uk . I only send overseas via the EBay Global Shipping Programme (GSP). Please note that I have no control over what Ebay charge for this service, so please make sure you are happy with the price before you bid or offer for the item. Also take a look at my other items for more Asian, cloisonné, Glass, Antiques, Silver, Bronze, Copper, China, Horn, and many other collectables. Thanks for looking 🤗

Price: 375 GBP

Location: Ferndown

End Time: 2024-01-05T19:46:31.000Z

Shipping Cost: 81.92 GBP