Furniture made at the Pyghtle Works Bedford by John P.White Designed by M.H.Baillie Scott

Derby: Bemrose & Sons Ltd. 1901. Rare trade catalogue. 282x218mm. 40pp with eighty-two items of furniture listed, described, priced and illustrated in black and white line drawings or photographs. With an additional eight colour plates with printed tissue guards. Original grey wrappers with woodcut illustration and lettering printed in black and orange to upper cover. Wrappers a little torn with some loss in a few places. Spine torn with some loss. Some marking and soiling and on the lower cover there are two architectural drawings in pencil made by a previous owner. Internally there is some soiling to the edges of the title page and the first two leaves are creased on the lower right corner. Overall though a very good copy of the delicate and scarce trade catalogue which helped cement the reputation of Baillie Scott as perhaps the leading Arts and Crafts designer of the early twentieth century. Commonly cited as one of the rarest of all Arts and Crafts publications, Worldcat locates seven copies worldwide and we have traced a further copy at Bedford Records Office. A six page introduction sets out the philosophy of the Pyghtle Works. Rooted in the Arts and Crafts ideal which sought to create new forms from the study, but not the imitation, of past styles, John Parish White's Pyghtle Works was founded in 1896. In 1898, he began making furniture to the designs of the architect Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott. That same year, work began on Blackwell, Baillie Scott's great Arts and Crafts house on Lake Windermere and in 1901 he moved to Bedford to concentrate on his furniture design for the Pyghtle Works. White's introductory essay stresses the importance of proportion and simplicity and argues that if ornament is to be used then it should reflect "some of the beauty of the earth". Baillie Scott's designs reflect these aims: particularly striking is his use of floral patterns and motifs. Although White and Baillie Scott hoped to make their furniture available to a wider audience, their exacting standards meant that, in many cases, only one example of a design was made such as the Secretaire (No. 1) which is now at Blackwell. Given how few pieces from this catalogue survive, we should see it as an important record of a pivotal moment in the Arts and Crafts Movement.