Christopher Dresser: Design Pioneer (Victoria and Albert Museum)

Christopher Dresser (1834–1904) is one of the most influential British designers of all time and he is widely regarded as Britain’s first independent industrial designer. His works still look remarkably modern more than a century later. Like his contemporary William Morris, Dresser advocated for an ‘honesty of materials’, but unlike Morris he fully embraced industrial techniques, designing for the growing consumer market. Dresser’s fascination with the arts of Japan and his advocacy of Owen Jones’s principle that ornament should be geometrical in form resulted in a range of designs that look surprisingly minimal for their time. Affordable, well-designed, functional and commercially successful, the objects that Dresser designed – wallpapers, textiles, carpets, ceramics, furniture and, most famously, metalwork – were industrially produced by manufacturers across the UK, the US and continental Europe.