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NEW YORK — Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) was called the “father of industrial design” and created many useful objects for the home. His works took inspiration from botanical sources as well as the artistic culture of Japan. While he was a key figure of the British Aesthetic Movement, embracing the spirit of making “art for art’s sake,” he was also commercially savvy enough to avail himself of the newest mass production techniques. He ensured his goods were well-designed but accessible to all, not just the wealthy.
Dresser designed pieces in a range of materials, including silver, ceramics, glass and textiles, and also made furniture. His influence on the tastes of North America and Europe is still visible today.
Among his most collectible forms are his small metalware objects, including his utilitarian toast racks, which were influenced by Japanese minimalism. Dresser attended the Centennial International Exhibition in 1876 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which was the first World’s Fair in the United States, and then visited Japan during 1876-77. While there, he traded British goods for a number of artisan-made objects. He was also commissioned by Tiffany & Co. to procure several thousand Japanese art objects to send back to their New York offices.
While at first seeming stark and perhaps even austere, his toast racks are abstract and akin to modern art. A silver-plated six-division toast rack he created for James Dixon & Sons made $5,829 plus the buyer’s premium in March 2020 at Kinghams Auctioneers. The circa-1881 rack, model 67, has a triple-arched form, each section having seven bars, and a rectangular handle. The V&A Museum in London, which has more than 400 of Dresser’s objects (including toast racks) in its collection, noted on its website that “Dresser’s most innovative designs were for objects to be made in metal.”
Dresser produced approximately 80 designs for James Dixon & Sons, which was founded in Sheffield, England in 1806 and was one of the most prominent makers in the Industrial Revolution. Not all his designs are believed to have been commercially produced, however. “This was possibly due to comparative expense of manufacture, but also because of the radical nature of the designs,” according to Lyon & Turnbull.
One fine design for Dixon was a spherical teapot, which was pictured in a cost book kept in the firm’s Sheffield archives with this description “1 gill teapot 2278/ Designed by Dr. Dresser.” The electroplated silver teapot, having a lozenge mark for 1880 and an ebony handle, made £10,000, or about $12,145 plus the buyer’s premium in November 2020 at Lyon & Turnbull.
Some of his best and most innovative designs followed his trip to Japan, as seen in an Aesthetic Movement chamber candlestick that earned £4,400, or about $5,344 plus the buyer’s premium in October 2021 at Lyon & Turnbull. This circa-1880 example was designed for the renowned London silversmiths Hukin & Heath. It was made of London electroplated silver and had an ebonized handle, a removable nozzle and a vesta cover.
Aspiring to create artful interiors that were elegantly simple, Dresser’s furniture designs departed from the overly ornate Victorian styles previously in vogue. His furniture had a modern look while still clearly showing influences from ancient Egypt and Greece as well as Asian styles. A gray-painted cast iron tall back chair, probably made circa 1869-70 for the British concern the Coalbrookdale Company, far surpassed its $1,000-$1,500 estimate to bring $11,000 plus the buyer’s premium at Stair in September 2020.
Dresser is also well known for his ceramics, which, like most of his other designs, have proven to be solid investments and have held their value on the market. A notable piece of Dresser stoneware is his chocolate-colored Flat Fish vase, of which an 1872 example brought $10,000 plus the buyer’s premium at Freeman’s in February 2023. According to the National Portrait Gallery, this vase design was originally created for the Linthorpe Pottery in Middlesbrough, England and helped put the town on the map as a key ceramics center. The example pictured was made at Wedgwood, however. “This vase was inspired by the shape of a fish. Its tail forms the base and its mouth forms the opening at the top with an ‘eye’ underneath,” according to the museum’s website.
Dresser also dabbled in glass relatively late in his career, and pieces in this medium are also sought after. Outperforming its £600-£800 ($735-$980) estimate was an early Clutha vase for James Couper & Sons in Glasgow, Scotland, where Dresser served as the firm’s designer from the 1880s to 1896. The circa-1890 vase brought £4,000, or $4,858 plus the buyer’s premium in April 2023 at Lyon & Turnbull. Named for the Roman patron goddess of the river Clyde (alternately spelled Clota or Clutha), this vase design also pays homage to the Clyde river flowing through Scotland.
According to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has a similar example in its collection, this design evinces “Dresser’s taste for the techniques and properties of the medium in a different, very particular way: its elongated form and clean, uninterrupted outline is attainable thanks to the lack of any necessary joins in the blown, drawn glass; the graceful patterning in opaque green glass accentuates this quality.”
Another daring Dresser design is a circa-1885 egg-shaped flask in brass and copper for Benham & Froud that realized £3,400, or $4,129 plus the buyer’s premium in April 2023 at Lyon & Turnbull. It retained its original stopper and chain, a fact which helped the piece sell above its £2,000-£3,000 ($2,450-$3,600) estimate.
Despite normal market fluctuations, the market for Christopher Dresser has been continually strong, owing to the enduring value of his daring designs. Contemporary collectors may find it harder to acquire museum-quality pieces as they seldom change hands and many are in institutional collections. Still, in keeping with his mission to make art accessible to all, works by Dresser appear at auction every so often; glass and ceramic smalls are most common.
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