British picture framemakers, 1630-1950 G part 2
Contributions are welcome, to Jacob Simon at jsimon@npg.org.uk
Cross-references to other makers are indicated by adding '(qv)' after the relevant name.
Resources and bibliography
Guild of Handicraft 1888-1898, Guild of Handicraft Ltd 1898-1908. At 34 Commercial St, London E 1888-1891, Essex House, 401 Mile End Road 1892-1902, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire 1902-1907, shop at 16a Brook St, Mayfair 1899-1909.
The catalyst of the English Arts and Crafts Movement, the designer Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942), set up the Guild and School of Handicraft in 1888. It initially made furniture, metalwork, and painted decorations. By 1892 the Guild had workshops at Essex House, Mile End Road and later opened a shop in Brook St, Mayfair. The description of the business in London directories changes from cabinet makers, to house furnishers in 1899 and to art metal workers and cabinet makers from 1900. In 1902 the workshops were moved to Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds, but by 1907 the Guild closed due to lack of profitability in a saturated market for artisan crafts. It was formally resolved to wind up the Guild of Handicraft Ltd in 1908 (London Gazette 6 October 1908).
C.R. Ashbee was listed in directories as Hon. Director of the Guild in 1890 and 1891, Frank Prout as Secretary in 1892 and 1893, and William James Osborn as manager from 1900 to 1902. The Guild of Handicraft Ltd advertised as an art school in The Year's Art 1906 with Ashbee as ‘Consulting Architect and Designer'.
John Williams, one of Ashbee's Guild workers, made repoussé copper frames to William Holman Hunt's design for the artist's May Morning on Magdalen Tower, both the large version at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, and the smaller one at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; the frames were exhibited on their own in 1889 and 1890 respectively (both repr. Wildman 1995 no.114; Brockhurst 2006, vol.2, pp.326-7). A parcel-gilt wooden frame for the photogravure of Hunt's Triumph of the Innocents was also produced by Guild workers, c.1888 (Manchester Art Gallery, information from Lynn Roberts).
Sources: Alan Crawford, ‘Ashbee, Charles Robert (1863-1942)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.
*James Lewis Guillet, active by 1747, Richmond, Surrey before 1772, Bath 1772, carver and gilder, picture framemaker. James Guillet, London by 1790, carver and gilder.
The Guillets traded as carvers and gilders over four generations, from the mid-18th to the late 19th century.
There were various members of the Guillet family in London in the mid-18th century. James L. Guillet witnessed the will of Jane Esther Gosset, widow of Matthew Gosset (qv), in 1748, and Maria Guillet received a bequest in this will. He also witnessed two marriages at the Huguenot church in Berwick St in 1747 and 1749 (Minet 1921 p.39). He is presumably be identified with the James Lewis Guillot of the parish of St Anne Soho, who took an apprentice, John Lemaitre, in 1754 (DEFM) and whose wife, Mary, gave birth to a son, William, christened at St Anne Soho in 1755. It remains to be seen whether he can also be identified with the James Guillet who set up in business as a picture framer in Bath in 1772, advertising as 'Carver and Gilder, from Richmond in Surry (formerly Apprentice and Foreman to Messrs. Gosset's, in Berwick Street, London)', selling ‘all Sorts of Picture and Glass Frames, Carlo Marat's, Italian and other Mouldings' (Sloman 2002 p.66).
Another James Guillet, perhaps James Lewis Guillet's son, was active in London by 1790 when he and his wife Frances had a daughter Mary Henrietta baptised at St Marylebone, followed by two further children, including a son James Charles Guillet (qv) in 1796. In his will dated 1 May 1828 and proved 27 June 1833, James Guillet describes himself as formerly a carver and gilder. He refers to his wife, Frances, and appoints as executors his son, naming him as Charles James Guillet, his daughter, and his friend, Thomas Maxfield Temple (qv). Before administration of the estate could be granted, his son, actually named James Charles Guillet, had to complete an affidavit that he was indeed the only son of the deceased.
For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.
*James Charles Guillet 1819-1855, James Charles Guillet junr 1856-1897. At 5 Hollen St, Soho, London 1819-1820, 4 Hollen St 1823-1839, Silver St, Kensington Gravel Pits 1838-1839, 42 Bedford Place, Kensington 1846-1864, 8 Bedford Place 1865-1867, 71 Bedford Gardens, Kensington 1868-1897. Carvers and gilders, picture framemakers.
James Charles Guillet (1796-1878) was christened at St Anne Soho, the son of James Guillet (qv) and his wife, Frances; he married Mary Hawker at St Marylebone in 1821, and a son, also named James Charles Guillet was christened at St Anne Soho in 1824. However, this son must have died young, as did another son by the same name in 1828 (Non-conformist BMD). The framemaker, James Charles Guillet junr (qv), was born about 1833. In the same year, when a daughter was buried, Guillet's address was given as 21 Silver St, Kensington Grove, suggesting that he was living in Kensington while working at that time in Soho.
In 1825, J.C. Guillet attended a meeting of more than fifty master carvers and gilders who resolved to resist the demands of journeymen for an increase in wages (The Times 30 June 1825). In 1839 he acted as assignee for his father's friend, the framemaker, Thomas Maxfield Temple (qv), who had been made bankrupt; Guillet's address was given as Silver St, Kensington Gravel-pits (The Times 17 October 1839). In the 1851 census, he was listed as a gilder and picture framemaker, age 55, at 42 Bedford Place in Kensington, with two sons who were gilders, James age 18 and George age 16. He died in Kensington in 1878.
James Charles Guillet senr framed a picture by Augustus Callcott for Sir John Soane in 1830, The Passage Point (Sir John Soane's Museum). In the same year, the engraver and landscape painter, Frederick Christian Lewis wrote to James Guillet concerning a framing bill and praised his work in a letter to Anne Bloxam (Royal Academy Archive, Thomas Lawrence family papers, GAR/1/141, 181).
James Charles Guillet junr: The son, James Charles Guillet junr (c.1833-1901?), would appear to have taken over the business in 1856; he continued to be described as ‘junior' in trade directory listings until as late as 1882. As James C. Guillet junr, carver and gilder, he had an account with the artists' suppliers, Roberson, 1862-78, from addresses in Bedford Place and Bedford Gardens (Woodcock 1997). He was listed at 71 Bedford Gardens in the 1881 and succeeding censuses, in 1881 as a carver and gilder, age 48, employing two men and in 1891 as a picture framemaker and carver. He retired from business in 1897 but continued to live at 71 Bedford Gardens, appearing there in the Post Office London directory, and in the 1901 census as living on his own means, but not thereafter.
James Charles Guillet junr, rather than his father, seems to have worked for the marine painter, E.W. Cooke, 1869-78, and apparently for William Mulready, who wrote to the collector, John Sheepshanks in 1857 concerning a frame made by ‘Guillett'. Guillet framed John Phillip's Princess Beatrice, 1860 (Royal Collection, see Millar 1992 no.550). The artist, Philip Hermogenes Calderon, recommended Guillet to the National Gallery in 1880 when it was seeking a new framemaker (Simon 1996 p.133).
Sources: E.W. Cooke ledger 1833-78, Royal Academy Library; see also John Munday, Edward William Cooke 1811-1880, Woodbridge, 1996, especially pp.228, 375-9; Martin Royalton-Kisch, 'An Archive of Letters to John Sheepshanks', Walpole Society, vol.66, 2004, p.245. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.
Hermann Guttmann, see F.A. Pollak
Found a mistake? Have some extra information? Who should be added to this directory? Please contact Jacob Simon at jsimon@npg.org.uk
