Lot 279
HENRY WILSON (1864-1934), W.E. MICKLEWRIGHT (MAKER)
ARTS & CRAFTS 'ZODIAC' CHEST, CIRCA 1920
Estimate: £4,000 - £6,000
Auction: Lots 1 to 336 | 16th October at 10am
Description
oak, with twelve relief carved Zodiac panels, each with inscription, cast brass lock plate
Dimensions
162cm wide, 84cm high, 60cm deep
Provenance
Provenance: W.E. Micklewright, Norton-sub-Hamdon, Somerset
Purchased from his workshop by the father of the current owner.
Footnote
Literature: The Studio, vol. 86. 1923, p. 265 where a similar chest, exhibited at the British Institute of Industrial Art of the same year is illustrated.
Note: The Arts & Crafts designer Henry Wilson trained initially as an architect under J. D. Sedding (1838-1891), who had himself been apprenticed to the leading Gothic revival architect George Edmund Street (1824-1881). Wilson continued his architectural commissions as his career progressed, but worked increasingly in metalwork, sculpture and jewellery. The Zodiac chest was illustrated in the Studio Magazine, Vol 86, 1923, and the relief carved panels are said to foreshadow the more sculptural bronzes Wilson designed in the final decade before his death in 1934.
This chest was executed by W.E. Micklewright of Norton-sub-Hamdon, Somerset. Henry Wilson’s connection to the small village began in 1894 when he was engaged to design restoration work required for the parish church, St Mary the Virgin. Another chest by Micklewright still sits at the end of the church’s west aisle. The workshop responsible for completing Wilson’s church designs was Charles Trask & Sons, with whom Sedding and Wilson had collaborated from as early as 1869, on St Martin’s Church, Low Marple near Stockport.
When Wilson first came to Norton-sub-Hamdon Micklewright was manager of the Charles Trask & Sons workshop, but by the 1920’s he owned and ran the premises. A surviving W. E. Micklewright catalogue illustrates items including the zodiac chest, a clock, cabinet and bed. According to the account of Mr Reg. Sweet, an apprentice in the workshop from 1923-25, the business employed at least eight craftsmen carrying out work predominantly in oak and of a religious nature. Sweet recalls Micklewright’s perfectionist tendencies but lack of business sense, the latter a factor presumably behind the workshop’s premature closure in 1925. The current lot was purchased at this time and, until now, has not left Norton-sub-Hamdon.
