Archibald Knox was a prolific Manx designer of Scottish descent best known for his work with Liberty of London at the start of the 20th Century – the same point in time as Moorcroft’s founding father, William Moorcroft was also carving out a name for himself in the Applied Arts. Whether it was through William’s business acumen or simply due to the fact that he was married into the Liberty- Lazenby family, William, unlike Knox, signed his designs under his own name.
Knox produced designs for many materials including paper, pewter and silver. For Liberty, Knox worked on all areas of design, but most notably as the main designer for silver and jewellery for the Cymric range (1898-1906) and pewter for the Tudric range (1902-1906). Such was Knox’ influence on the range, and utter fascination with its design style, that it later became a Celtic revival at Liberty In truth, Knox, like William Moorcroft, enjoyed the craft aspect behind his creations, although not all were hand-crafted by Knox himself, they were, nevertheless, designs that entered into new territory in the Art Nouveau idiom as well as Modernism. Like William Moorcroft himself, Knox was a trail blazer.
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Above: Polished pewter Arts & Crafts clock from Liberty & Co's Tudric range, with enamel & copper dial.
It is said that most of Knox’s most revered, and most in vogue, creations were those designs that carry assay marks for 1900-1903. After this period the popularity of the range started to decline and, correspondingly, Liberty started to remove some of the cost and quality of the range. After 1903, it is more common to see lighter more mass produced pieces of Liberty silver perhaps carrying Knox motifs, but not, sadly, all by Knox.
Other Liberty items designed by Knox included a range of terracotta garden pottery, textile and wallpaper designs and a very few items of furniture. Nevertheless, it is perhaps his Gothic Tudric silver clocks and jewellery for which he is most celebrated. As with many great names in the Applied Arts, Knox was not fully appreciated for his sheer genius until after his death when the Liberty centenary exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1975 magnified the beauty of his work.
It is not only Museums that celebrate the work of past masters, but also artists and designers themselves. Emma Bossons, was greatly influenced by Knox’s wallpaper and Cymric design motifs. Furthermore, Moorcroft Chairman, Hugh Edwards, had the foresight to see that Knox’s Tudric shapes would work perfectly with some of Moorcroft’s Gothic revival designs. As Emma began to draw some of Knox’s dove motifs and stylised leaves, the hands of a gothic clock ticked back in time, and the life’s work of two great designers amalgamated.
Beyond any doubt, Emma has taken the sophistication of the great designer’s inimitable style into the highest echelons of Moorcroft design through an explosive mix of colours and design work. Under a canopy of vibrant green and red motifs, purple threads are harnessed into a distinctive interlace pattern, and burnt bracken- coloured leaves, harking back to some of Knox’s original wallpaper designs, appear to mutate into swaying trees. With utter creativity, these trees become the arms for nesting doves, all curled up against a dusky ground in true gothic style.
