For those who know the work of Ernest Gimson (1864–1919), the publication of Annette Carruthers, Mary Greensted, and Barley Roscoe’s Ernest Gimson: Arts & Craft Designer and Architect is a welcome biography. For the countless architects, artists, and teachers who have only heard Gimson’s name, it is essential reading and should be firmly placed on the curriculum of the Royal Insititute of British Architects and of all institutions that offer architectural courses. It also contains exceptional photographs of Gimson’s work.
By the time of his sudden death at the age of fifty-five, Gimson was recognized as one of the most inspiring modernist architects of the day. The historian Nikolaus Pevsner, whose eponymous guides defined British architectural history in the mid-twentieth century, named him “the greatest of the English architect-designers.”
The authors’ research is meticulous and provides important details of Gimson’s early years. He came from generations of East Midlands farmers, timber merchants, metal workers, carpenters, and engineers. His father rose to become the owner of a successful Leicester engineering firm and then a highly respected Town Councilor. Architecture was then considered what would now be called a “socially aware” profession in the arts, and the Gimsons’ home life provided an early intellectual grounding. On leaving school at the age of sixteen in 1881, Ernest joined Leicester’s most advanced architectural practice as an apprentice, with the proviso that he also enroll at the Leicester School of Art to broaden his knowledge of the fine arts—common practice by this
