Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) was a designer and writer on design, now widely known as Britain’s first independent industrial designer and as a contributor to the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain.

Though trained as a botanist, by 1857 he was writing a series of articles in Art Journal until the title "Botany as Adapted to the Arts and Art Manufactures." He later published The Art of Decorative Design (1862), The Development of Ornamental Art (1862), and Principles of Design (1871-72). His design work included carpets, silver and electroplate, wallpaper, pottery and glass, and metalwork. From 1879, he was appointed director of the Linthorpe Art Pottery in Middlesbrough (although his name was to have disappeared from the ware by 1882) and was one of the first to import Japanese goods into Britain.

Sources

• Judith Flanders. Inside the Victorian Home: a Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004.

Christopher Dresser | Christopher Dresser