The Deer’s Cry of Archibald Knox

Archibald Knox is best remembered as a silversmith, jeweller, designer of tableware, clocks, broaches, and decorative buckles. Although, it’s a love of calligraphy and hand-rendered typography that connects his entire career. He was a notable influence in the British Arts and Crafts movement of the late nineteenth-century, developing a distinctively British response to Art Nouveau. Interestingly, he had trained with <a href="https://medium.com/signifier/when-east-met-west-a-new-art-grew-5b4cb9928d74" rel="noopener">Christopher Dresser</a>, the designer who played a significant role in defining Art Nouveau and who was responsible for creating a few of the first objects to be referred to as such. Another trait Knox shared with Dresser was a focus on functionality and a tendency to simplify whilst recognising that part of an object’s function may well be decorative. Along with their colleagues associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, they celebrated traditional artisan techniques but also welcomed industrial processes, such as metal casting, stamping, and enamelling to reproduce individual yet similar items that remained more ‘affordable’. Together, they are often credited for modernising Fin de Siècle style into something uniquely British and along with Charles Rennie Mackintosh became the triumvirate most influential in the transition from <a href="https://medium.com/signifier/nouveau-or-deco-b4856cd801fd" rel="noopener">Nouveau through Deco</a> to ModernAfter teaching art and training as a silversmith in London, becoming one of Liberty’s principal designers, Knox returned to the Isle of Man where he continued to work for the store at the vanguard of London’s design and fashion scene. Being back in his homeland didn’t seem to affect the rate of commissions and by 1904 he’d produced some 400 designs including jewellery, tea services, lamps, and the clocks that are still much sought-after by collectors. <a href="https://medium.com/signifier/the-deers-cry-of-archibald-knox-a1097b4cf50f">Click Here</a>