Charles Robert Ashbee

Ashbee was born in Isleworth on May 17, 1863, and died in Sevenoaks (Kent) on May 23, 1942. He read history at King’s College, Cambridge, and studied architecture in the office of G. F. Bodley. He was taken by the ideas of John Ruskin and William Morris, and in 1887 he set up the School of Handicraft, which lasted until 1895, and, in 1888, the Guild of Handicraft, which was liquidated in 1907 (although it continued in much reduced form until 1919). By 1890, there were workshops in the East End and a retail outlet in Mayfair. In 1902, the works moved to Chipping Camden in the Cotswolds. The Guild specialized, based on Ashbee’s designs, in metalworking, producing jewelry and cutlery and tableware, as... more.