ALFRED HOARE POWELL (1865 - 1960)

 
 
THE MAGNOLIA TREE   
 
 
Signed & dated l.r.  Hoare / Powell / 1946
Gouache on linen
29.5 x 23.5 cm 
 
 
 
PROVENANCE
A Private Collection of ceramics by Alfred & Louise Powell
 
 
 
 
 
 
Alfred Hoare Powell was born in Bisham, Berkshire, and was articled to William Oswald Milne (1847-1927) in London for three years, during which time he attended the Slade.  From 1887 to 1892 he worked in the London office of the architect John Dando Sedding.  In 1893, Powell was awarded the RIBA Owen Jones Travelling Scholarship and spent three months in Italy with his friend the designer John Paul Cooper.
 
Following his return to England, he trained in carpentry in Abinger, near Dorking. He also joined the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAD) and undertook repair and restoration work on behalf of the Society, including at the Clergy House in Alfriston, Sussex, the first house to be owned by the National Trust.  
 
 
In 1897, Powell shared an office in London with the architect Detmar Blow, and the following year he and Blow worked together on the restoration of Joiners Hall in Salisbury.  In 1898, Powell relocated his office to Guildford in Surrey. In the early 1900s he moved to the Cotswolds where he began an association with Ernest Gimson and Sidney and Ernest Barnsley, who had established a craft workshop in Sapperton in Gloucestershire.  Powell settled nearby at Gurners Farm in Oakridge Lynch in 1902.  He then embarked on various architectural projects in the Cotswolds, also establishing his own craft workshop making traditional ladder-back chairs.
 
 
 
In 1904, Powell's career took a new direction: he started hand-painting ceramics for Josiah Wedgwood & Sons. Around this time he met and, in 1906, married Ada Louise Lessore (1865-1956), subsequently known as Louise Powell.  She had studied painting at the Slade and calligraphy and illumination at the LCC Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. Louise would go on to collaborate with her husband in designing and painting ceramics for Wedgwood.  In 1907, Wedgwood set up a studio expressly for the pair in Red Lion Square in London. Thus began an association between the Powells and Wedgwood that was to continue for the next four decades.
 
 
Though the Powells lived in London, they always maintained a studio in the Cotswolds.  Alfred taught pottery painting at Central School of Arts and Crafts and continued his connection with Gimson, for whom he occasionally produced decorative woodwork.  He was also one of the team of craftsmen engaged in the twenty-year project to build and decorate Rodmarton Manor in Cirencester, completed in the late 1920s.
 
 
 
Alfred was a member of the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society and participated in their 7th (1903), 8th (1906), 9th (1910), 10th (1912), and 11th (1916) exhibitions in London. He also exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1890 and 1891, and at at Baillie Gallery in London in 1925. In 1925 and 1926 he exhibited jointly with Louise at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.