Gordon Russell (designer)

Career

He came under the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement from 1904 after his father had moved to Broadway in the Cotswolds to be hotelier at the Lygon Arms, through the Guild of Handicraft, the community of metalworkers, enamellers, wood carvers, furniture makers, and printers brought in 1902 by C. R. Ashbee from east London to Chipping Campden.

Following service as an officer in World War I, for which he was awarded the Military Cross in 1918, he became a furniture maker and designer. In 1925 Russell won a Gold Medal at the Paris Exhibition with a cabinet, with internal drawers lined with boxwood, ebony and laburnum, and valued in 2013 at £50,000 - £60,000. He designed the 'Stow' range of furniture in the mid 1920s.

During World War II he was instrumental in developing utility furniture as Chairman of the government's Utility Furniture Design Panel. In 1943 he became Chairman of the Utility Design Panel. In 1947 Gordon Russell became director of the Council of Industrial Design (COID) (later renamed the Design Council. He became the first chairman of the Crafts Council.

Notable designs by Russell include chairs for the re-built Coventry Cathedral. His brother Richard Drew Russell was also a designer.

He was awarded a knighthood in 1955 for services to design. He wrote a number of books on furniture, including 'Furniture' (1947), 'How to Buy Furniture' (1947), 'The Story of Furniture' (1947, with Jacques Groag, later published as 'Looking at Furniture' (1953, 1964)). In 1968 he published his autobiography.

Portrait bust of Sir Gordon Russell

Gordon Russell sat for sculptor Alan Thornhill for a portrait in clay. The correspondence file relating to the Russell portrait bust is held in the archive of the Henry Moore Foundation's Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and the terracotta remains in the collection of the artist. A Bronze is in the collection of the Gordon Russell Museum in Broadway, Worcestershire.