Lot 279
ERNEST GIMSON (1864-1919)
SET OF EIGHT ELM CHAIRS, CIRCA 1906
Auction: 16 November 2011 at 11:00 GMT
Description
each with chamfered lattice backs above drop-in rush seats raised on square legs linked by stretchers, includes two carvers (8)
Footnote
Provenance: Robert Robertson Esq., and by descent
Note: Robert Robertson was born on 9 July 1866 and educated at Perth Academy. After training and education in Scotland he obtained a position as assistant in the London County Council Architects Department in 1890, where he remained thereafter. Initially an assistant in the Housing Section, in 1901 he became Assistant Architect in charge of Housing of the Working Classes, in which capacity he took a leading part in designing all the large LCC housing schemes of the early years of the 20th century. He spent two years with the London Scottish regiment during the First World War and in 1916 was seconded to the Ministry of Munitions, where he occupied the position of Director of Housing Construction until 1919, when he returned to his county appointment. He was subsequently promoted to Chief Divisional Architect (Schools), and in 1919, upon the recommendation of the new chief architect George Topham Forrest, was promoted again, to the position of Chief Assistant Architect (the post becoming Chief Divisional Architect in 1926). He was elected FRIBA in mid-1930, his proposers being Forrest, Edwin Paul Wheeler and Frederick Robert Hiorns, all of the LCC Architects Department. Robertson retired in 1931 and died in 1939.