10/06/2026
Vase
Designed by Herman A. Kähler
Produced by Kähler
1900
Glazed cermaic, silver marks
Unique Cabinet
Designed by Archibald Knox
1901
Oak, brass, glass
Provenance:
Gifted by Archibald Knox to Alfred James Collister R.B.A. A.R.C.A.
Thence by descent.
History:
Whilst the metalwork Knox designed for Liberty & Co. is relatively commonplace, furniture designed by him is extremely rare. This sideboard was given as a wedding present by Archibald Knox to Alfred James Collister and Gertrude Beatrice Ward, 24th July 1901, where Knox was Collister’s best man.
Knox had met Collister at Art School and left the Isle of Man to join him in 1897 as a part-time assistant teacher at the new Redhill School of Art in Surrey. He soon became a regular designer for the ‘Silver Studios’ in Hammersmith, an agency which provided anonymous designs to many firms, including Liberty & Co. with which Knox is so famously associated. Around 1899 Knox returned to Man and made hundreds of designs over the next few years which were produced in silver and pewter, before returning to Kingston Art School as Design Master.
Of the few known furniture pieces, an oak clock case with stylistic affinities is illustrated in Stephen Martin (op.cit., p. 238). Of more interest is the contemporary photograph of a bureau (illustrated in op. cit., p. 108), also part of the wedding gift given to Collister. Martin notes the bureau, and so presumable the current lot, was made in the Isle of Man by craftsmen at the Ballanard Brick, Tile and Terra-Cotta Works, Ballanard Road, Douglas, where one of the principals, a Mr W. J. Ashburner, was also a close friend of Knox.
