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Thomas Edward Collcutt

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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"THOMAS EDWARD COLLCUTT (1840-), English architect, was born March 16 1840. After a pupilage with R. W. Armstrong, he entered the office of G. E. Street, where he remained as chief assistant for three years. The time spent under so strong and impressing an influence had, however, little effect on his own work and design in the future, which never went along Gothic lines, but always spoke his own predilection for a free and personal treatment of Renaissance work - owing more, perhaps, to French than to Italian suggestion. To this method he was, throughout his career, strongly attached, and his designs, shaped on these lines yet speaking his own individuality, had a pronounced influence on the current work of the English architects of the last quarter of the 19th century. It was at the beginning of this period that Collcutt made himself felt in helping forward the movement to which at the same time William Morris was devoting himself - for a highly raised standard in the consideration of the interior treatment and furniture of the English house. Under, and for, the then well-known firm of Collinson & Lock he carried out the decorative work to, and furniture for, many houses in various parts of the country, a preparation of value to him at a somewhat later period when he was one of the first artists to be asked to help in a worthier treatment of the interior decoration of the ships of the large steamship companies. In this capacity he dealt with a considerable number of the P. and 0. steamships. It was in 1872 that T. E. Collcutt carried out his first important building - the free library at Blackburn, the commission for which he obtained, as was the case with much of his subsequent work, by a spirited and brilliant design which was successful in a large competition. The even more important town hall in Wakefield, obtained in the same manner, followed a few years later, and is an example of Collcutt's skill in arrangement of plan. His most noteworthy building, however, is the Imperial Institute, London, founded in 1886 by King Edward VII., then Prince of Wales, as a national memorial of the jubilee of his mother's reign. The new building faces on a road formed across the site of the Horticultural Gardens, the whole of the area of which it occupies, and its free and open position, thus obtained, gives it an advantage uncommon amongst modern London buildings. Its elevational treatment speaks the grace and refinement characteristic of the architect's work, and of his usual suggestion of verticality by means of non-ordered pilasters the whole height of the building. Its style is of a free Renaissance type, with details such as cornices and strings perhaps, as some critics say, on somewhat too small and delicate a scale. It nevertheless stands out as a successful achievement in modern English architecture, and one upon which the artist's signature is clearly written. With very much the same character and feeling Collcutt designed the Royal opera house, London - later known as the Palace theatre - making much use of marble and alabaster as decorative material for the interior, and later on he carried out the Savoy hotel, another instance of his careful plan arrangement. He was elected a president of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1906; he received that society's gold medal in 1902, and three years earlier was awarded the Grand Prix for architecture in connexion with his artistic services at the Paris Exhibition.