Voysey's metalwork: a postscript

In 2020 the editorial panel of The Orchard (The Journal of the C F A Voysey Society) were kindly offered the use of Ruth Allford’s 1988 dissertation on C F A Voysey which contained a chapter on his metalwork. The panel were agreed the chapter should be published, along with an extended range of new illustrations. However, this postscript paper was considered necessary as in the thirty-two years that had elapsed since Ruth Allford presented her dissertation, much new material and information regarding Voysey’s activities as a designer of metalwork had come to this author’s attention. The postscript was therefore intended to supplement and clarify some of the content of Ms. Allford's original paper and correct any factual inaccuracies. It also provides an important opportunity to explore, for the first time, the influence the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft metalwork (designed by A S Dixon) had on Voysey’s own metalwork designs. Voysey having seen Dixon’s work exhibited alongside his own at the various Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society exhibitions. Uniquely, it is only in the field of metalwork that Voysey the arch ‘individualist’, can be justifiably described as a follower not a leader.