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John Williams for the Guild of Handicraft.
An exceptional copper mirror with four pomegranates to the base, and Art Nouveau elongated lilies rising up on both sides culminating in a lily flower head to each side, the top has a central sun design with radiating sun rays filling the whole upper panel, with lovely light chocolate patina and the whole framed in a fine oak surround. An impressive size and probably one the largest commission John Williams ever made measuring 250 cm x 133 cm.
The mirror or possibly originally a picture frame, is in the same style as the frame commissioned by William Holman Hunt for his painting 'May Morning on Magdalen Tower', which hangs in The Lady Lever Art gallery. That frame was made at The Guild of Handicraft.
The Guild workshop began, in 1888, in an attic at 34 Commercial Street, close to Toynbee Hall. C.V. Adams, a cabinetmaker, John Pearson metalworker, who taught John Williams, and Fred Hubbard were all a part of the workshops from the outset. John Williams had no skills when he began working at the Guild but he was a natural and took to the repousse work so quickly that with less than a year’s experience behind him he had made two large picture frames, from Holman Hunt's designs, and even exhibited one item of repoussé metalwork at the Guild's first exhibition at the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society in October 1888.
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