SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: Works by a self-taught craftsman from Croydon, who was influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement popularised by William Morris, now sell for thousands of pounds at auction.
DAVID MORGAN explores the story of Gilbert Marks
Home service: Boswell House today, the home of Gilbert Marks’ family at the end of the 19th Century
Croydon has a long and proud list of artists and crafts workers who have been born in the borough or lived and worked here.Cicely Mary Barker, Theodore Fielding, George Paice and Rosa Petherick have all achieved artistic excellence in their chosen fields.
One Croydon creative made their mark, not by using pallet and brush but by hammering and sculpting pieces of metal. Gilbert Leigh Marks was a silversmith, producing exquisite Arts and Crafts-style pieces toward the end of the 19th and into the early years of the 20th century.
The Marks family lived at 6 Whitgift Terrace, Wandle Road, according to the 1871 census, and at 115, Waddon New Road, in 1881. Ten years later the family were living in Boswell House, 17 South End.
All this time, their father was working for a shipping company trading in sherry. He was a bookkeeper initially, rising to become the manager.
Gilbert was born on April 1, 1861. Along with his four brothers, John, Hugh, Geoffrey and Oliver, they all attended Whitgift Grammar School, which was then located in North End in Croydon town centre.
Town centre: Whitgift Grammar School, from a 1902 postcard, as it would have appeared when Gilbert Marks and his brothers attended. The school and its playing fields stood in Croydon town centre until demolished in the 1960s to make way for the shopping mall
In the 1871 census, Gilbert was 10, Hugh seven, Geoffrey six, John two and sister Sarah, named after her mother, four months. The family had one servant. Sarah died in infancy.
According to the census, the family had one live-in servant.
Gilbert attended Whitgift from 1871 to 1878 and so would have been a pupil when Robert Brodie, the renowned Victorian headmaster, was in charge. Gilbert was listed in the school register as pupil number 41.
He had been educated privately for a year before entering Whitgift by a Mr Webb, probably Henry Webb, who ran the Young Gentlemen’s Academy at 25 London Road.
Plaque of honour: Gilbert Marks produced this and one other memorial for his former school
As well as showing great creative flair in school, Gilbert Marks excelled at cricket and became captain of the first XI. He was given the nickname “Lord” by his peers.
There was a great deal of creativity in the wider family. His grandfather WH Walker was a goldsmith and jeweller. Two of his uncles were painters: John Marks (1829-1898) and Frederick Walker (1840-1875). Walker was most famous for his painting The Woman in White, with John Marks being best known for his depictions of Shakespearean characters and scenes.
Gilbert Marks’ father was also a writer. He wrote a well-regarded biography of his artistic cousin, Frederick, which was published in 1896.
After leaving school in 1878, Marks went to work for a firm of silversmiths: Holland, Aldwinckle and Slater, of Jewin Crescent in the City of London. He does not appear in any list of the firm’s apprentice silversmiths, his name only down as a clerk.
Around 1885 he went to work at Masurel et Fils, a wool brokers who still trade in the City today, as Segard Masurel. When he married Florence Elizabeth Ford in 1888, his occupation on the marriage certificate was given as “wool brokers’ manager”.
So when did he start his work as a silversmith?
It was not until 1895, by which time Gilbert Marks will have been in his mid-30s, that he registered his hallmark at Goldsmiths’ Hall in the City and held an exhibition of his work at Johnson, Walker and Tolhurst, of Aldersgate Street, so it seems probably that he had practised his craftmanship in his spare time.
Johnson, Walker and Tolhurst played a significant role in promoting Marks’ work, creating interest and attracting sponsorship. It is possible that Marks learned much from the craftsmen in Aldersgate Street whilst still working at his desk job.
Valued provenance: silversmith Gilbert Marks’ signature on a piece of his work from 1900
At this time, Marks and his wife were living at 21 Dingwall Road.
Marks’ pieces for the exhibition included rosewater dishes, salvers, goblets and flower vessels in repoussé, where silver, or other metal, is hammered from the back to create a raised, three-dimensional design on the front. Marks was especially skilled at this.
His debut exhibition was critically acclaimed. The September issue of The Studio included a review: “The surfaces of the objects were not over-ornamented, pleasant plain spaces being left which served to accentuate the beauty of the designs.
“The marks of the tools employed in chasing or hammering out the design were not obliterated and the whole of the exhibits had that pleasant sense of ‘handwork’ which is entirely missing in the majority of wrongly called artistic work produced under the direction of the trade.
“We shall await with interest the further development of Mr GL Marks’ work.”
Not a bad way to start. Marks received various commissions following his exhibition.
Civic pride: Mayor Eldridge presented Gilbert Marks’ mace to the council
One came from Croydon Council (in the days when they, or the Mayor of the time, had some money). They asked Marks to create a ceremonial mace. This wonderful piece bears the Latin inscription Municipibus Suis Croydoniensibus Fredericus Thomas Edridge Praefectus MDCCCXC-I-V. D.D.D. A.S. MDCCXCVI, which translated means, “A magnificent gift from the Mayor, Alderman Frederick Eldridge, to the Corporation”.
Eldridge was a long-standing churchwarden at Croydon Parish Church, now Croydon Minster, and a significant figure and benefactor in Croydon society at the end of the 19th Century. The mace remains in use at council meetings held in the Town Hall Chamber today.
Marks’ design for the mace reflected a real understanding of the history of Croydon. It included a swimming trout with river weeds and flowers, as a reference to the River Wandle, together with three shields. The first was the borough’s coat of arms, the second was of Edward Benson, the Archbishop of Canterbury at that time, and the third was of Archbishop Whitgift, the great Croydon benefactor.
There were important details on the mace. too. A Tudor rose was included as a reminder of Archbishop Whitgift’s friendship and service to Queen Elizabeth I. A Shirley poppy can be seen, linking in the great horticultural work undertaken by Rev William Wilkes, the vicar of Shirley.
By royal appointment: the Cowes Regatta Bowl, made by Marks for the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII
The inclusion of the poppy and the Wandle flowers on the Croydon mace was typical of Marks’ work. He often included wild flowers in his designs, using creatures such as lizards or fish as a motif, but with flowers and foliage as his main theme.
Marks’ Arts and Crafts designs suggest a strong influence from William Morris, the Victorian poet and designer, who during the 1880s had established his textile design and printing factory just up the Wandle from Croydon, at Merton Abbey.
One of Marks’ most important commissions was for the then Prince of Wales. A silver bowl, with a design of a salmon leaping through the water, dated 1898, was presented by the Prince to the Cowes Regatta Committee to give as a prize.
When this bowl came up for auction at Bonhams in 2008, it made £51,600.
Another sporting piece which Marks made was a decorated silver plate for the Sussex County Golf Union, to be used for their annual club competition.
Trophy piece: Marks’ silver salver for the Sussex county golf competition
Marks never forgot his old school, Whitgift. He made several pieces for them, including house cups and trophies. Perhaps the most significant of his work for them were two memorials.
One was for Robert John Cheyne, who died in 1899.
Cheyne and Marks were contemporaries and may have known each other at school. They both joined in 1871. Cheyne went on to teach at the school, employed as a languages teacher, described as a master linguist.
Marks’ design was again floral-based, this time working in bronze.
The other memorial was to remember three noble acts of former Whitgift Grammar School pupils in South Africa, who lost their lives during the Boer War.
In an interview which Marks gave to the London Art Journal in 1898, he said, “The man who is buying the stock plate is buying a useful item but unique ones, whereas he who commissions an original work upon which the craftsman has bestowed his best personal labour is buying a work of art, the money value of which increases with an increase of reputation that may come to the artist.”
In demand: Marks’ work included presentation pieces for journalists injured during the Boer War. ‘Mr Winston Churchill was unavoidably absent’
Every piece which Marks made was unique. He never repeated a design in exactly the same way. He didn’t use a die or any machinery. He hand-made everything, ensuring that there was no polishing which he felt would destroy the beauty of the metal’s natural colour.
Marks exhibited regularly at Johnson, Walker and Tolhurst until 1901. He also had exhibitions at the Royal Academy, Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and Leeds City Art Gallery.
One of his pieces is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. This is a silver casket made to a design by George Frampton for the Skinners’ Company. It was subsequently presented to the Speaker of the House of Commons, William Court Gully.
Several pieces are in significant collections, at the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, Worshipful Company of Pewterers, Honourable Society of the Inner Temple and at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
The last date on a piece made by Gilbert Marks was 1902. He had suffered various periods of ill-health and died in the Holloway Sanatorium, near Virginia Water, on February 2, 1905. He was 44.
He was buried in Queen’s Road Cemetery in Croydon, where his mother and sister Sarah were also interred.
An obituary in Burlington Magazine described him as, “an artist of delicate grace and charm, whose name will probably take high rank in the estimation of the collector and connoisseur”.
In his brief working life as a silversmith he produced as many as 800 items, each unique, each one precious. Such works can be subject to the tastes of the time, but Marks’ designs, seemingly quite “modern” by Victorian standards, are fashionable now. One was brought for an evaluation to the BBC Antiques Roadshow in 2019, an 1899 silver bowl which was valued by their silver expert Duncan Campbell as likely to realise £3,000 at auction.
Apart from the mace, are there any of Gilbert Marks’ pieces still left in Croydon?
You might have a fortune sitting on your sideboard.
David Morgan, pictured right, is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- Croydon cricketer who helped establish game in Melbourne
- Lost at sea: nearly 300 dead on their journey for a new life
- Enter the Almshouses and travel back in time four centuries
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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