Studio: international art (22.1901)

Nelson and Edith Dawson

TROWEL IN SILVER AND ENAMEL

BY NELSON AND EDITH DAWSON

showed a more lavish use ot colour and symbolic
device: this the Royal Academy, with an in-
consistency hardly creditable to that august body,
declined to exhibit. A less formal and very charm-
ing work of similar nature is the " Kipling Posy
Casket" in silver and cloisonne enamel, of which
two illustrations are now given; a most dainty
rendering in fine craftsmanship of the verse—

Buy my English posies !

Kent and Surrey may—■
Violets of the Undercliff

Wet with Channel spray ;
Cowslips from a Devon combe—

Midland furze afire—
Buy my English posies

And I'll sell your heart's desire !

A commission entrusted to Mr. Dawson in

1899 and ably executed by him, was the making
of the trowel (illustrated on this page), and
box to contain it (page 169), for the use of
Her late Majesty the Queen when laying the
foundation stone of the new buildings of the
Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington.
The trowel is of silver and enamels, and the box
enriched with worked steel and silver. It is to be
hoped that the example thus set, in the highest
quarters, of encouraging the individual work of an
artist in a direction in which he is especially in-
terested will be followed to a greater extent in
future. The decoration of the completed buildings
should afford many opportunities of employing old
Kensingtonians of proved ability.

A combination of metal and enamel is es-
pecially suitable to the purposes of heraldry,
which demands simple and brilliant colours com-
bined with conventional ornaments and forms;
and in this branch of art Mr. Dawson has also
done some notable work, of which we reproduce
a specimen—an Heraldic Badge (page 170) in
cloisonne enamel; while a cloak ornamentation—
also in silver and cloisonne—is an example of a
type of personal ornament essentially modern in
feeling, and yet free from that grotesque strain-
ing after effect at any cost, which characterises so
much of the design of the last decade. Among
the earliest and finest uses of enamel, its adaptation
to the brooch or button is quite pre-eminent, and
it is little short of marvellous that the women of
our day should not adopt this beautiful decoration
to a far greater extent than hitherto. Of jewellery
pure and simple the Gold Necklet, with penda?i/s
0/enamel and star sapphires, is a dainty and charm-
ing type. The chain is slender, but thoroughly
well-made and of great strength, so that its very
delicacy serves to heighten the effect of the attach-
ments, built up as they are with a most just sense
of proportion and harmony of colour, into a grace-
ful and effective whole. Those who visited the
exhibition of work by Mr. Dawson at the Galleries
of the Fine Art Society in New Bond Street last
.winter will remember many other examples of
ornaments similar in feeling to the subject of our
illustration: one is especially worth recalling, a gold
necklet, Forget-me Not, with green and blue trans-
lucent enamel on gold; and another, alike in subject,
with spinel rubies and irregularly-shaped opals. Mr.
Dawson has made the suggestions to be obtained
from simple English flowers quite a personal char-
acteristic of his work, and at the same exhibition
his Speedwell, Daisy, Love-in-a-Mist, Crocus, and
other floral emblems were used with great skill

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