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(fl London, 1865–82).

English furniture designer and manufacturer. He may have been trained by the Gothic Revival architect and furniture designer J. P. Seddon, whose work certainly influenced his first published design, a davenport in a geometric Reformed Gothic style, in the Building News of 1865. That year he also advertised a ‘New Registered Reclining Chair’, made by Marsh & Jones of Leeds, whose London showrooms were near his own premises off Cavendish Square. In 1865 Marsh & Jones supplied the Yorkshire mill-owner Sir Titus Salt with a large group of furniture, including a bedroom suite, and in 1867 with the case of an Erard grand piano (all Leeds, Temple Newsam House) designed by Bevan; described at the time as ‘medieval’, the pieces are decorated with geometric marquetry ornament. Bevan designed a bookcase for the Manchester firm James Lamb, which was shown in the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867, and by the following year was also designing for ...

(b Caernavon, 1823; d after 1883).

Welsh furniture designer. He was a cabinetmaker working in Warrington when he designed and made his first major piece, the Warrington State Bedstead (untraced, see Jervis, 1989, pl. vii(a)). This huge oak bed, elaborately carved in a quasi-Renaissance manner, was inspired by the Austrian furniture displayed in the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition in 1857 (first shown by Carl Leistler at the Great Exhibition in 1851). The bed received national publicity and in 1858 was put up as prize in a lottery that left Charles bankrupt the following year. In 1860 he published the Cabinet Maker’s Monthly Journal of Designs, which includes designs in a number of popular contemporary styles: Renaissance Revival, naturalistic and a Reformed Gothic inspired by A. W. N. Pugin. He moved to London and continued to publish: in 1866 the Cabinet Maker’s Book of Designs of 60 untitled designs for sideboards in a variety of styles and in ...

(fl London, 1760–c. 1770).

English furniture designer and cabinetmaker. He was recorded as working in the Haymarket, London, from 1760 until 1766, but no furniture documented or labelled from his workshop has been identified. In 1760 he contributed 50 designs to Houshold Furniture in Genteel Taste, sponsored by a Society of Upholsterers and Cabinetmakers, and in the same year he published the Carpenter’s Compleat Guide to the Whole System of Gothic Railing, which consisted of 14 plates. There followed the Cabinet and Chair-maker’s Real Friend and Companion in 1765, with designs for 100 chairs in Gothic, chinoiserie, Rococo and Rustic styles. A second edition, virtually unaltered, appeared in 1775. In 1766 he brought out the Chair-maker’s Guide, containing ‘upwards of Two Hundered New and Genteel Designs … for Gothic, Chinese, Ribbon and other chairs’; it includes two plates from William Ince and John Mayhew’s Universal System of Household Furniture and at least six from ...

(b Brussels, Aug 31, 1847; d Brussels, Sept 11, 1917).

Belgian architect, designer, engineer, writer and politician. After graduating as an engineer at the University of Ghent in 1870, he established himself in Charleroi before settling in Ghent on his marriage in 1872. Under the influence of Jean-Baptiste-Charles-François Baron Bethune, he worked in the Belgian Gothic Revival style on architecture, furniture and wall paintings and in stained glass, gold, iron and embroidery. From 1875 to 1895 he directed the workshop for stained glass founded by Bethune. Verhaegen’s most important building is the new Beguinage (1873) of Sint Amandsberg near Ghent, which conforms to the severe Gothic Revival ideals of Bethune and anticipates some of the features of garden-city designs. His churches and conventual buildings at Ghent (Poortakker, 1874; St Macharius, 1880–82), Hekelgem (abbey, 1880; church destr.), Paris (Oeuvre des Flamands Church, c. 1875) and Rome (Everlasting Adoration, 1885–6) and châteaux at Watermaal-Bosvoorde (1880–81) and Merelbeke (...

(b Aigburth, Liverpool, July 19, 1830; d Yattendon, Berks, Aug 22, 1905).

English architect, furniture designer and painter. In financial terms he was probably the most successful architect of the 19th century, and his office, of a dozen or so full-time staff, was able to produce large quantities of high-quality drawings with speed and efficiency. His skill in planning was recognized at an early stage, but appreciation of his stylistic achievement has been slower. He was influenced by Ruskin and A. W. N. Pugin, as well as by the more practical approach of George Gilbert Scott, but he developed his own approach to the composition of forms and a preference for bold simple ornament to match the increasing scale of his buildings. He did not confine himself to a single style but was adept in Gothic and, later, free Renaissance styles, and he developed a preference for the neo-Romanesque. He distinguished between carved or moulded ornament on plain stone and decorative materials such as veined marble, which he generally left unornamented. His concern for hard-wearing surface materials led him to adopt terracotta as a facing material, in which he was both a pioneer and protagonist. His sensitive handling of materials approached the aims of the Arts and Crafts Movement, but he always accepted that building was an industrial process. His buildings are characterized by sound planning and bold and picturesque outline, with particular attention given to the skyline in urban buildings....