Max Donnelly will discuss the career of Glasgow-born designer and entrepreneur Daniel Cottier (1838-91), based on research for his co-edited monograph, Daniel Cottier: Designer, Decorator, Dealer (Paul Mellon Centre, 2021).
Cottier trained as a stained-glass designer in Scotland and then London, establishing his own firm making stained glass and interior decoration in Edinburgh (1864). By 1870 he had moved to London where his business expanded and his studio made furniture and painted ceramics; he also established himself as a dealer in contemporary European paintings.
Cottier opened a branch in New York and a Sydney partnership (1873), becoming a leading figure in the international Aesthetic Movement and, in New York, a furnisher of gilded age interiors; his clients ranged from Queen Victoria and Alfred, Lord Tennyson to Henry Clay Frick and H.O. Havemeyer. Cottier’s stained glass and decoration can be seen in numerous prominent buildings in the UK, USA and Australia, among them St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh; Trinity Church, Boston, and St Andrew’s College, University of Sydney. Furniture, stained-glass and ceramics made by his firm, or paintings which he sold, are in major collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Max Donnelly is Curator of Furniture and Woodwork, 1800-1915, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Flora (detail), staircase window in Ingliston House, Midlothian, by Cottier & Co., London, c.1870–5. Stained glass. © Colin McLean
PLEASE NOTE: THIS TALK WILL NOT BE RECORDED
