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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Sedona, post: 3494276, member: 4438&quot;]**UPDATE**</p><p><br /></p><p>I know this is an older post. A few weeks ago I tried to locate Ian Bruce, who wrote a book in 2001 about the Keswick School for the Industrial Arts (KSIA) entitled “The Loving Eye and Skilful Hand: The Keswick School of Industrial Arts.”</p><p><br /></p><p>The only thing I could find online was that in 2015 he was part of a historical program held in Cumbria. I took a gamble and emailed the organization that hosted the event. A woman named Helen answered, and searched their old email records and found a contact email for Ian Bruce.</p><p><br /></p><p>I then emailed Ian Bruce, and sent him photos. He just responded today. Because so many responded here, and gave me information about the Keswick school, I wanted to share the response.</p><p><br /></p><p>William Henry Mawson was first recorded as a pupil at KSIA in 1898, when he won first prize at the school. He is recorded as working at the school and paid wages in 1899. By 1903 he had left, and later established an antiques business at Lake Road in Keswick. From there he carried out metalwork commissions and carving.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ian said the chest clearly originated from the time Mawson operated the business on Lake Road in Keswick. Workers at KSIA were not allowed to mark their work with anything other than the official school mark, described as the letters KSIA arranged in a lozenge.</p><p><br /></p><p>During Mawson’s period of independent working, both his metalworking and carving were marked with his mark W.H. Mawson. He also used a mark K.H.I. (Keswick Home Industries). This mark may have been adopted because Mawson bought and sold the work of outworkers (working at home) or other craftsmen in Keswick.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ian said I can be certain that the chest was executed by Mawson’s own hand.</p><p><br /></p><p>No production records survived, so it cannot be known if this was a commissioned piece, or made from stock. KSIA taught both metalwork and carving, and frequently copied historic designs drawn from illustrations, often from Renaissance designs. Ian said that occasionally one finds a historic reference from which the design is drawn. Ian said he knew of no other piece of carving similar to the chest, but that it was a fine piece of work by a master craftsman.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, this is all very cool, to me. I have no artistic or creative talent, but I greatly admire those who do. I have so many antique pieces of unknown origin. That I now know who worked so hard and so masterfully, that my family admires and cherishes it over a century after it left the shop, is wonderful. I admire it even more! </p><p><br /></p><p>Thank you all who responded to my initial inquiry. I never would have been able to get this information.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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