Alfred Hoare Powell

Infobox Architect


caption=
name=Alfred Hoare Powell
nationality=British
birth_date=1865
birth_place=
death_date=1960
death_place=
practice_name=
significant_buildings=Bransby Hall, YorkshireBedales School
significant_projects=Long Copse, Ewhurst, Surrey
awards=|

Alfred Hoare Powell (1865–1960) was an English Arts and Crafts architect, and designer and painter of pottery.

Career

Alfred Powell was a pupil of John Dando Sedding, working in the 'crafted Gothic' tradition inspired by John Ruskin. His wife, Louise Powell, née Lessore, was the daughter of an artist, and studied embroidery, calligraphy and illuminating. Together Alfred and Louise Powell became celebrated as pottery designers for Wedgwoods. They collaborated on the revitalisation of the arts and crafts, rejecting industrialisation and designing furniture decoration, embroidery and ceramics, and encouraging a communitarian spirit in the South Cotswolds.

Alfred Powell with the younger architect Norman Jewson was the most significant associate of Ernest Gimson and the brothers Ernest and Sidney Barnsley at Sapperton, in Gloucestershire, in the Cotswold Arts and Crafts revival. He settled nearby at The Thatched House, Tunley, near Oakridge, in the late 1890s. He worked with Detmar Blow and F.W. Troup for both the National Trust and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.

Architectural works

Powell's architectural works include a house at Bransby Hall, Yorkshire, for Hugh Fairfax-Cholmeley; repairs at Barrington Court, Somerset and Queen's College, Cambridge; and projects with others of the Gimson school at Pinbury Park and Rodmarton Manor, near Sapperton, and Bedales School in Hampshire. Long Copse (1897), at Ewhurst, was much praised by contemporaries; it was described by the painter G.F. Watts as the most beautiful house in Surrey.

Alfred Powell edited the memorial volume to his friend Ernest Gimson, "Ernest Gimson: his life and work" (1924), with contributions by William Richard Lethaby and F.L. Griggs.

Literature and Sources

*"Good Workmanship with Happy Thought: The Work of Alfred and Louise Powell", Exhibition Catalogue, 1992

*Jacqueline Sarsby, 'Alfred Powell: Idealism and Realism in the Cotswolds', "Journal of Design History", vol. 10, No. 4, "Craft, Culture and Identity" (1997), pp. 375-397