Who was Owen William Davis? (1838-1913)

Owen William DavisL was born in Devon and was articled to James Kellaway Colling in London and worked as an assistant to Matthew Digby Wyatt. Although he trained as an architect, Davis worked primarily as a decorative artist and designer and was a friend and colleague of Charles Locke Eastlake. He designed furniture for James Shoolbred & Co. and Cox & Sons, wallpaper for Jeffrey & Co. and W. Woollams & Co., and metalwork for Benham & Froud. Today his work is little-known with focus being on his contemporaries however in his day, Davis was an imaginative and prolific designer.

Davis published Art and Work in 1885. Instructions for the Adornment and Embellishment of Dwelling Houses, Entitled Interior Decoration in 1886. And then The Rudiments of Decorative Painting, as applied to the rooms of a dwelling house in 1886. He also supplied designs for Richard Charles' 1868 book The Cabinet Maker and Journal of Designs.

Furniture he designed for Shoolbred was shown at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. He exhibited at the Royal Academy in London between 1881 and 1884. He also participated in the 1st (1888), 2nd (1889) and 3rd (1890) exhibitions of the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society in London.

Ref. Charlotte Gere and Michael Whiteway, Nineteenth-Century Design, From Pugin to Mackintosh, Appendix of Architects, Designers and Manufacturers, pages 280-298, George Weidenfeld and Nicholson Ltd, 1993.

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