British architects and designers, E. W. Godwin (1833–1886) and William Burges (1827–1881) (Figs. 1, 2), were friends for more than twenty years.¹ Godwin sought out the somewhat older Burges in London sometime after 1858 when Godwin, already practising as a Gothic Revival architect in Bristol, was impressed by a Burges design for a proposed fountain for the city of Gloucester published in The Builder, 29 May 1858.² Although it was never executed, Godwin wrote in his obituary of Burges that he admired the Sabrina fountain ‘[for its] realisation of the Middle Ages, such as no modern pencil had in my then very limited experience produced’.³ A sketch of the ‘Burgesian Gothic’ fountain can be found in Godwin’s sketchbooks annotated ‘After Burges’.⁴ Moreover, Burges had already established himself internationally by winning commissions for Lille Cathedral (1856) and the Crimean Memorial Church at Constantinople (1856–61), though both were also never realized. Godwin, eager to start a London practice, sought out the well-recognized Burges. Up the stairs of 15 Buckingham Gate, London, Godwin tells us he climbed in search of the gifted architect who was already a wealthy young man due to an inheritance from his father, a successful marine engineer. Knocking on the door he writes:

I introduced myself; he was hospitable, poured wine into a silver goblet of his own design, and placed bread on the table. With few words on either side we ate and drank, and thus began a friendship which was more intimate and sincere than any friendship of my life.⁵

Fig. 1: Photograph of E. W. Godwin with sketchbook in hand (c. 1880), in Susan Weber Soros, The Secular Furniture of E. W. Godwin: With Catalogue Raisonné (Yale University Press, 1999), p. 14.

Fig. 2: E. J. Poynter, William Burges at the age of 31, picture placed on an inside door of the Yatman Cabinet (1858). V&A Museum, CIRC.217:1, 2-1961.

Throughout the 1860s and 1870s, when Burges was beginning to work on his great architectural masterpieces, St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork (1865–76) and Cardiff Castle (1866–1928), Godwin was creating the new Town Hall, Northampton (1861–64) and Dromore Castle, County Limerick (1866–73). Among other projects, they met often in Bristol and London and twice went on working holidays in Ireland. A certain parallel Gothic Revival approach and whimsical spirit can be seen in the buildings of both architects. This close relationship continued throughout the 1860s with Burges becoming a corresponding member and sometimes attendant to the Bristol Society of Architects in which Godwin was a prominent fellow. In addition, Burges often stayed with Godwin and his partner, the actress Ellen Terry, in their Red House in Wheathampstead (designed by Godwin in 1868–69) and then Fallows Green near Harpenden, Hertfordshire (designed by Godwin in 1870–71).⁶ Terry even traced out Burges’s drawings for the interior of Cardiff Castle Clock Tower.⁷ Burges fashioned a bookstand for Terry for her prized set of Alexander Chalmers’s edition of Shakespeare.⁸ Many of the scenes and motifs painted on the shelf are derived from pages of the 1856 edition and the Shakespearian roles she played. Today, the work is in her home, Smallhythe Place, Kent. Godwin and Burges’s collaborations on architectural projects, however, were limited. In 1865 Godwin assisted Burges for his competition entry for the Law Courts in London, spending a week discussing and drawing at Burges’s father’s house in Blackheath, London.⁹ The two later discussed collaborating on a modern theatre and jointly written book on the ‘right and wrong use of certain constructional forms’: both projects never realized.¹⁰

Mark Girouard described how ‘in the 1860s Godwin and Burges were the Castor and Pollux of architecture’.¹¹ However, there was ‘a cooling in their friendship’ in the 1870s.¹² They argued over the use of colour with Burges liking bright primaries and Godwin favouring more neutral tones.¹³ They also disagreed on the beauty of proportions with Godwin feeling that Burges’s designs suffered from ‘an exaggerated expression’ of proportions.¹⁴ By 1873 their careers branched off with Burges remaining wedded to his fantastical Gothic Revival style while Godwin moved on to embrace other historicist styles, such as the Anglo-Japanese that he was credited with originating and popularizing.¹⁵ Godwin writes of their differences of opinion and approach as ‘our little tiffs’, for which ‘“we trod on one another’s toes,” as [Burges] used to say; we even quarrelled more than once, but we fought side by side the common enemy of art’.¹⁶

Sketching was an important part of their lives and both were distinguished draughtsmen. Godwin tells us that Burges was always taking notes and making sketches. Burges preferred thirteenth-century style and he based his draughtsmanship on the famous sketchbook of Willars de Honnecourt in the Bibliothèque nationale, Paris. Godwin writes:

In his little pocket-books then and throughout his career the cunning fingers were ever busy noting down the art longings and thoughts of the yet busier brain; and of the many lovely works he has left behind him, I know of none to compete in interest with these tiny memorandum books, containing as they do his first ideas of nearly everything he subsequently carried out, and of many a dream beside.¹⁷

It is not surprising that Godwin, too, was also a constant notetaker and sketcher. Many of his sketchbooks are in the V&A, one of which includes one of a handful of existing portraits of Burges.¹⁸

Although Burges’s output was small in comparison to Godwin’s, they both worked on varied commissions including warehouses, churches, castles, houses, and schools. Godwin admired Burges for his powers of adaptation and assimilation and for his ability to be ‘an evolutionist or developist, rather than a revivalist’: an aspiration shared by Godwin.¹⁹ No detail was too small for either of them to select or to design (Figs 3, 4). Both regarded themselves as art-architects. Godwin wrote of the unity of the arts in an unpublished lecture ‘The Sister Arts and their Relation to Architecture’. Prepared for the Bristol Society of Architects in 1863, the central thesis was that the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture were no longer dependent on each other as they had been in the Middle Ages, and that until they were reunited under the control of a unifying spirit — the architect — they could not flourish. He warned architects that ‘when each room and each article of furniture shall be found to be but resolutions of the same key-note […] then may we hope to have an art of our own’.²⁰

Fig. 3: E. W. Godwin, Interior (1877), plate 14, in William Watt, Art Furniture from Designs by E. W. Godwin and Others (Batsford, 1877), doi:10.5479/sil.486032.39088010585693.

Fig. 4: William Burges, Design for Summer Smoking Room, Cardiff Castle (1871–74), 46 × 61.9 cm, mixed media on paper. Amgueddfa Cymru / National Museum Wales, NMW A 3220. Designed for the 3rd Marquess of Bute. Decoration by Fred Weekes and H. W. Lonsdale. Watercolour by Axel Haig.

Burges had a parallel belief in the role of the architect, writing in the RIBA Journal that ‘an artist [and] an architect […] are one and the same thing’.²¹ He gave a series of lectures at the Royal Society of Arts in 1864 (published as Art Applied to Industry), which illustrated the range of his interests with chapters on glass, pottery, brass and iron, gold and silver, furniture, the weaver’s art, external architectural decoration, and the modern development of medieval art.²² He later credited the future of architecture to a renaissance of the decorative arts.

These two polymaths would generate furniture, wallpaper, tiles, ceramics, stained glass, and metalwork for clients as well as for their own use. Godwin wrote of Burges that ‘the real joy he had in his work, the almost child-like delight he felt in designing anything and watching it carried out, no one could appreciate who had not witnessed it’.²³ A comparison of their designs reveals their differences in sources and styles. Burges’s furniture, for example, was generally heavy with medieval painted decoration corresponding with the greater painted schemes on surrounding walls and ceilings. The Philosophy Cabinet — so called for being decorated with the ‘troubles of philosophers and literary men’ — made for his guest bedroom at Tower House (1878–79), is painted with fictive stone masonry in a basic medieval form with crenelated cornice.²⁴ Godwin’s furniture used less painted decoration and depended more on the quality of the woodgrain and its elegant rectilinear outline. Its overall scale was slender with struts based on Japanese and Chinese woodwork. Godwin’s Lucretia Cabinet (1873) was made by the London firm of Collinson & Lock, for whom he was under contract, and painted by Charles Fairfax Murray.²⁵ As his career developed, he used lighter proportions and design more for the commercial trade, such as his pieces for the firm of William Watt.

Burges’s wallpaper designs were limited, an example being one for Jeffrey & Co. (1872) showing a frieze with the pattern of dark squirrels and leaves on a paler background with a border of trefoils (Fig. 5).²⁶ It is similar to patterns on medieval tiles where a dark motif or pattern contrasts with a light background. Godwin’s wallpapers, greater in number, were more dependent on Japanese sources such as his Bamboo and Peacock designs for Jeffrey & Co. (Fig. 6). The same tendencies held true for ceramics, designed to be integral to their respective architectural schemes. Burges created four tulip-shaped vases adorned with parakeets sitting in blue scrolling foliage, while around the belly are four oval armorial bearings associated with the Bute family. The vase was one of four made to be placed on the stone brackets in each corner of Cardiff Castle’s Summer Smoking Room, a galleried interior at the top of the Clock Tower.²⁷ Godwin’s pair of red earthenware vases with Japanese birds and fan ornament was conceived to complement an Anglo-Japanese interior.²⁸ Both men fashioned tiles, such as Burges’s zodiac tile panel in blue and white for W. B. Simpson and Sons and Godwin’s tiles from a set adorned with birds (c. 1881).²⁹ In stained glass, a Burges fire screen with stained-glass panels and medieval ornament can be compared to a Godwin panel, probably for Dromore Castle, recently come to market.³⁰ This may be one of twelve panels created by Godwin for the drawing room at Dromore. The windows depict the twelve months of the year, with this particular one representing Sagittarius drawing an arrow behind the figure of Colin who is lamenting a dead maiden.³¹ This design was based on Edmund Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender. It was, however, in the fields of metalwork and jewellery that Burges outshone Godwin. Godwin’s designs are limited to a fireplace surround with Greek palmettes for the studio of Oscar Wilde’s friend and hybridizer of lilies, Frank Miles. His studio house at 44 Tite Street, London was designed by Godwin in 1878. In contrast, Burges undertook a wide range of metalwork from chalices to flagons and fireplace accessories (Figs 7, 8). An example of Burges’s excellence in jewellery is a brooch and a gold ring set with a cabochon sapphire, both medieval in inspiration.³²

Fig. 5: William Burges, Fragment of wallpaper frieze with a design of dark squirrels and leaves on a paler background (1872), woodblock print and flock on embossed paper. V&A Museum, E. 1862–1934. Manufactured by Jeffrey & Co.

Fig. 6: E. W. Godwin, Design for ‘Bamboo’ wallpaper (1872), watercolour on tracing paper. V&A Museum, E.515-1963.

Fig. 7: E. W. Godwin, Fireplace in the studio ingle, Frank Miles’s House, 44 Tite Street, Chelsea (1879), cast iron, made by Shillit and Shortland, photographed in 1997, in Susan Weber Soros, E. W. Godwin: Aesthetic Movement Architect and Designer (Yale University Press, 1999), p. 57.

Fig. 8: William Burges, Soup plate and flagons, silver, Birmingham hallmarks for 1867–68, mark of John Hardman and Company. V&A Museum, M.59-1981. Designed for John Patrick Crichton Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute.

Burges mostly designed one-off, bespoke commissions for wealthy clients, particularly the 3rd Marquis of Bute, and his own London homes, first at 15 Buckingham Street and then Tower House, Melbury Road.³³ Godwin also worked for individual affluent clients, constructing whole exteriors and interiors as well as working on his own homes. But he was also in the thick of commercial production, being engaged in a successful furniture-making business with the manufacturer William Watt.³⁴ In his preface to the Art Furniture Catalogue published in 1877, he advised Watt ‘to continue producing furniture of refined design, of good workmanship, of reasonable cost’. Plate 16 of the catalogue, ‘Economic Furniture’, shows pieces for the parlour and bedroom. He also fashioned textiles and wallpapers for commercial use, such as a Japanese-inspired brocade, called ‘Butterfly’ (c. 1874) made by Warner, Sillet and Ramm,³⁵ and a selection of Japanese-inspired wallpapers from Watt’s Art Furniture Catalogue. Unlike Burges, who worked for private commissions in his own Gothic style, Godwin worked in all the historicist styles that popular taste demanded, such as Georgian, Cottage and Queen Anne styles, Anglo-Greek, Anglo-Egyptian, Jacobean or Old English, as well as Anglo-Japanese.³⁶

Both men were interested in antiquarian studies. Godwin was largely self-taught, initially from architectural books and periodicals. He then made a series of measured drawings of Celtic crosses and studied and measured churches, castles, and abbeys. To establish his credentials as an established antiquarian, he published articles in specialist journals on such subjects as Bristol Cathedral and Old English or Saxon buildings.³⁷ Godwin’s interests ranged far beyond the Gothic, taking him to classical Greece, Celtic Ireland, eleventh-century Denmark, and Saxon, Jacobean, and Restoration England. He shared a passion for archaeology with Burges who was also a prolific publisher of antiquarian articles on a wide range of subjects, such as Swedish churches, Greek sculptures, and medieval mosaics.³⁸ Godwin writes of Burges that

reference to authorities was a marked characteristic of the man, and it was always a pleasure to me to watch him probing any assertion concerning the past to its root. No second-hand evidence would ever fully satisfy him, and the why and the wherefore were ever on his lips. With the same penetrative intelligence which made him such a master of Gothic, he dug into the quarries of Renaissance and Greek art, and no one could be more keenly alive to the merits of the one and the super-excellence of the other.³⁹

Burges took inspiration from many cultures and sources which resulted in a fantastical style called ‘Burgesian Gothic’. He believed that

there are two great uses of antiquarian studies. One of them is to enable us to conjure up as if by the magician’s wand the dress, furniture, architecture, &c., of past ages, so that we can live, as it were, in many centuries almost at the same moment […]. The other use of antiquarian studies is to restore disused arts, and to get all the good we can out of them for our own improvement.⁴⁰

To this end Burges had a large library of illuminated manuscripts (sixteen of these volumes found their way into the British Museum), historical texts (seven hundred titles sold off in two sales), and eclectic collections of decorative arts.⁴¹ Arms and armour were an important part of his holdings and a number of his favourite pieces went to the British Museum or the Tower of London Armouries, including a suit of Japanese armour.⁴² His trove of precious metalwork and ivory, which included gold Byzantine earrings, a Roman cameo ring, ivory mirror cases, devotional tablets, and caskets with carved animals, were also bequeathed to the British Museum upon his death.⁴³

The two men shared an interest in Japanese art, particularly prints. Some of Burges’s print collection is in the Victoria & Albert Museum, pasted into a sketchbook. From one of these prints by Ichiyusai Shigenobu, who was a pupil of Hokusai, Godwin drew a number of Japanese mon or crests into a sketchbook of 1870.⁴⁴ Godwin was to adapt these compositions to create some original textiles, tiles, and wallpapers which helped to assimilate Japanese art into European design. In 1862 Burges visited the Japanese Court at the International Exhibition. He reviewed the court for the Gentleman’s Magazine in which he compared the art of the Middle Ages and Japan:

An hour or even a day or two, spent in the Japanese department will by no means be lost time, for these hitherto unknown barbarians appear not only to know all that the Middle Ages knew, but in some respects are beyond them and us as well.⁴⁵

Burges’s pursuit was so intense that he sent ex-pupil Josiah Condor to Japan to transform Japanese architecture and hired a Japanese man as an assistant in his office.⁴⁶

Godwin’s study of Japanese arts and crafts probably began in the late 1850s. In 1862 he decorated his Bristol house with Japanese prints and an array of Asian objects, many bought in and around Bristol, which was one of the busiest shipping centres importing Japanese artefacts in the second half of the nineteenth century. Godwin was probably well aware of the Japanese art exhibited at the 1861 Industrial Exhibition in Bristol and the Japanese display at the International Exhibition of 1862. He also began to explore contemporary photographs of Japan and foreign accounts of travellers to Japan.

In addition to adapting Asian features and motifs into Western forms, Godwin at times incorporated actual Chinese and Japanese fragments and accessories into his designs. His celebrated sideboard in the V&A, for example, has panels of embossed Japanese leather paper in its upper and lower cupboard doors (Fig. 9). Burges had five examples of this paper in his vast collection.⁴⁷ A walnut cabinet also in the V&A has Japanese carved boxwood floral panels as well as ivory netsuke in the form of monkeys for handles (hence its nickname, the Monkey Cabinet).⁴⁸ Such panels, originally intended for wallpaper, and ivory netsuke were for sale in the galleries and bazaars that specialized in Asian arts and crafts in the London of the 1860s and 1870s.

Fig. 9: E. W. Godwin, Sideboard (c. 1867), Anglo-Japanese, ebonized mahogany with silver-plated handles and embossed paper panels. V&A Museum, CIRC.38:1 to 5-1953.

Burges also incorporated Asian fragments and accessories into his designs. Godwin understood that Burges’s great skill was in the adaptation of sources, not their slavish imitation. Of the architect’s inkwell (Fig. 10), he wrote:

Take a Chinese bronze elephant incense-burner, with dumpy legs that are hardly more than feet, remove the pierced howdah-like cover, and in its place put a low circular tower of green porcelain, domed with a cloisonné cup reversed, and crowned with a Japanese netzuki. Combine these things with metal mouldings and machicolated parapets fashioned after the manner of the thirteenth century; arrange the ivory finial, the dome and tower so that each may turn on a pillar at the back, uncovering receptacles for matches, red ink, and black; mount the whole on a slab of marble and suspend chains, and rings, and seals from tusks and trappings, and you have the ink-stand Burges had made for himself, which occupied the centre of his writing table all the years I knew him, and reminds me of him more than anything he ever achieved. Observe the power of adaptation: the things he is dealing with are Chinese and Japanese, but the whole is thirteenth century — Burgesque […]. And it was this mastery in conventional treatment, this power of governing natural form so that it should best serve the artificial purpose for which it was selected, that he possessed in a remarkable degree.⁴⁹

Fig. 10: William Burges, An ink stand in the shape of an elephant (1862–63), 35.3 × 24.3 cm, photograph. Amgueddfa Cymru / National Museum Wales, NMW A 12996.

The two friends also shared an appreciation of Greek art. Burges visited Greece in 1857 and admired Greek sculpture, coins, and jewellery, which became part of his vast collection.⁵⁰ Mordaunt Crook points out that ‘such a visit was not only rare for a High Victorian Goth, it was almost unique’ (p. 49). In his two-part article on Tower House in the Art Journal in 1886, Godwin wrote that

although [Burges] believed the French first pointed to be the best school of architecture for us to work in — the type best adapted to our climate and requirements, his faith was by no means bigoted. His appreciation of the beauty, picturesqueness of Greek architecture was intensely genuine.⁵¹

At the Conference of Architects in London in June 1876, Burges gave a paper on ‘The Importance of Greek Art and Literature to the Practice of Gothic Architecture’, in which he said:

I would earnestly recommend a careful study of Greek Art and Greek Literature to my Gothic brethren. It is really the key to the position; but in studying Greek Art it will not be sufficient to consult Stuart’s ‘Athens’ and other-like books. The actual buildings must themselves be visited … It was not until I was actually on the spot that I understood how beautiful Greek Architecture was, and how nearly it was allied in spirit to that of the thirteenth century.⁵²

Godwin, too, recognized the beauty of Greek art but he derived his knowledge from ancient artefacts in museums and secondary illustrations in archaeological studies, since he never visited Greece. He explored the Greek artefacts in the British Museum and assimilated their design elements into a series of Anglo-Greek furnishings for the home. A ledger entry from 1876 reveals that Godwin was then creating a line of Anglo-Greek furniture for Waugh & Sons.⁵³ Drawings of Grecian-style furniture in his sketchbooks give us some idea of these pieces, such as tripod tables and Klismos-type chairs and thrones with cut-out legs and inlaid decoration.⁵⁴ When he was later working on the sets and costumes for a Greek play, the production of John Todhunter’s translation of Sophocles’ Helena in Troas in 1886, he resurrected the Greek theme and designed a line of Anglo-Greek furniture for William Watt. Notebook sketches indicate that this series was inspired by nineteenth-century texts on ancient Greek art and by antiquities in the British Museum. One such sketch shows a stool with a rounded leg from the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum, similar to a stool in the series, and a couch from the Dictionnaire des Arts Grecques (1873).⁵⁵ Godwin also created floor cloths, wallpapers, and ceramics including a so-called Greek dado staircase wallpaper for James Toleman at 170 Goswell Road, London made up of square and rectangular compartments with branches of fruit and leaves, interspersed with panels of classical ornament rising out of a Greek urn.⁵⁶ Godwin devised an Anglo-Greek ceramic toilet set for the Staffordshire pottery Brownfield and Sons (c. 1875) as well as for Watt to outfit an Anglo-Greek interior.⁵⁷ A sketch shows designs for jugs and bowls after Greek vases in the V&A.⁵⁸ Godwin also wrote two articles on ancient Greek furnishings: ‘The Greek Home According to Homer’, published in the Nineteenth Century in 1886; and ‘Ancient Greek, Assyrian and Phoenician Furniture’, which exists only in a draft form in the RIBA.⁵⁹

Burges and Godwin’s common interests carried over into the field of theatre. They often visited the theatre together and Godwin tells us in his obituary of Burges that ‘one of his great ambitions was to build a theatre’.⁶⁰ Both recognized that the theatres of their time were outmoded. Although such a joint project was never realized, Burges did design the speech room at Harrow School as part of what was originally meant to be a museum, laboratory, two science lecture rooms, an art room, four classrooms, and a gymnasium. He used the raked seating and semicircular plan of an antique Greek theatre for its interior and Gothic style for its exterior, with a pitched roof and asymmetrical towers. The interior decoration for a processional frieze fitted with Grecian authors and allegories of the muses was never installed.

Godwin had a lifelong involvement in the theatre. He began by writing a series of ‘Theatrical Jottings’, signed simply ‘G’ for the Bristol Western Daily Press from 1862 to 1864, in which he reviewed productions in Bristol, Bath, and London, criticizing the inaccuracies of dress, scenery, gesture, and delivery that he observed. Ten years later he wrote a series of thirty-two articles on Shakespeare entitled ‘Architecture and Costume of Shakespere’s Plays [sic]’ published from 1874 to 1875 in The Architect. Godwin tried to ‘fix’ the time of each play and discussed the appropriate historical sources for staging and costume. One on which he advised was Henry V. However, Burges published a letter listing some incorrect items of costume, indicating that they cannot have been approved by Godwin and inviting him to respond with a critique of his own. ⁶¹ Godwin answered with ‘Henry V: A Theatrical Experience’, discussing the way in which his assistance had been changed or totally ignored, citing examples of improper scenery, costume, and properties.⁶²

Godwin also designed stage sets and costumes. One of his most intriguing projects was Todhunter’s aforementioned Helena in Troas.⁶³ It opened in Hengler’s Circus, an arena which was normally the site for equestrian and circus events. His sketchbook contains the plan of a Greek theatre from Professor Mahaffy’s History of Greek Literature and a sectional drawing of Hengler’s. On a printed plan Godwin made coloured annotations reducing the number of seats to allow for the stage.⁶⁴ His signed watercolour ‘Proposed Alterations to M^ss Henglers Cirque for Greek Play. March 1886’ shows the final plan and scenic elevation countersigned by builders and the scenic artist Walter Hann (Fig. 11). The costumes were modelled on authentic Greek designs recreated from Godwin’s notes from the Iliad and the Odyssey and from his copies of figures on Greek vases.⁶⁵

Fig. 11: E. W. Godwin, Hengler’s Circus, London: plan of the arena and elevation of the stage showing alterations proposed for the staging of John Todhunter’s Helena in Troas (1886), 27 × 48.3 cm, pencil, pen and ink, ink wash, and watercolour. V&A Museum, E. 632-1963.

In 1882 Godwin was engaged with the foundation of the Costume Society. Two years later, he became an adviser on dress at Liberty’s and persuaded the shop to establish costume studios, where any kind of dress, ancient or modern, could be fashioned. Burges was also immersed in the study of authentic costume. He owned a large library of works on the history of costume, including J. R. Planché’s History of British Costume (1834), C. Bonnard’s Costume des XIII^e, XIV^e et XV^e siècles (1829), and F. W. Fairholt’s Costume in England (2nd edn 1860). In a highly detailed article entitled ‘Books on Medieval Costume’ in the Building News of August 1879, Burges wrote:

The architectural student, on seeing the title of this paper, may perhaps ask, Of what possible use can the knowledge of costume be to me? To which it may be answered: If you understand by architecture only a knowledge of the anatomy of houses, or the supervision of their erection, the study of costume can be of no advantage to you unless in your lighter moments you may want to dress for that most ridiculous of institutions, a fancy ball. If, on the other hand, you view Architecture, as the Great Art, entailing a knowledge more or less, of most of all the other arts, costume may be very useful indeed. It will often enable you to fix dates for buildings or pictures; it will enable you to realise past scenes and past times; it will add a colouring to your reading, and finally will do something towards making you what a good architect should always aim at being—viz., an accomplished gentleman.⁶⁶

Both men enjoyed dressing up and were photographed in historical dress. Godwin in medieval dress (c. 1861–65) and Burges as court jester in an outfit he himself designed (Fig. 12).⁶⁷

Fig. 12: Unknown photographer, William Burges (c. 1860), albumen print mounted on cream card. National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG P231.

Burges and Godwin continued to see each other until the last decade of their lives with Godwin visiting Burges at Tower House.⁶⁸ In his obituary of Burges, Godwin commented:

But it was not only in architecture and its decoration that his artistic ability was manifest; his own offices and house, Lord Bute’s castle, and many other homes contain examples of his skill in furniture, in gold and silversmith’s work, and indeed in every branch of art industry, from precious reliquaries to cheap paper-hangings. All were designed with vigour — sometimes perhaps, too masculine — some exquisite in their refinement and delicacy, and most of them full of quaint conceits.⁶⁹

Five years later, in a two-part article on Burges’s Tower House, Godwin’s appreciation of his friend’s life and career was still evident. He dedicated these articles ‘to the genius of one whom I admired, revered, and honoured, as an artist, and who for twenty years was my most intimate friend.’⁷⁰

Notes

1. There are few surviving letters between Burges and Godwin, so this account is mostly based on Godwin’s writings on Burges. For more information on Burges, see J. Mordaunt Crook, William Burges and the High Victorian Dream, rev. edn (Frances Lincoln, 2013). For Godwin, see E. W. Godwin, Aesthetic Movement Architect and Designer, ed. by Susan Weber Soros (Bard Graduate Center and Yale University Press, 1999). [^{^}]
2. W. Burges, ‘A Proposed Fountain for Gloucester’, Builder, 16 (1858), pp. 374–75 (p. 375). [^{^}]
3. E. W. Godwin, ‘Friends in Council No. 15: William Burges A.R.A.’, British Architect, 15 (1881), pp. 213–15 (p. 213). [^{^}]
4. E. W. Godwin, Designs for fountains, c. 1860–77, sketchbook, red ink, London, V&A Museum (V&A), E.270-1963. [^{^}]
5. Godwin, ‘Friends in Council’, p. 213. [^{^}]
6. Ellen Terry was still married to the painter G. F. Watts and so could not marry Godwin. She left Godwin in 1875. See Dame Ellen Terry, The Story of My Life (Hutchinson, 1908). [^{^}]
7. Dudley Harbron, The Conscious Stone: The Life of Edward William Godwin (Latimer House, 1949), p. 72. [^{^}]
8. William Burges, Bookstand containing eight volumes of Chalmers’s Shakespeare, date unknown, Smallhythe Place, Kent Collection, National Trust, NT 1117707. [^{^}]
9. William Burges, Law Courts, Strand, London: Burges’s defeated competition design, 1866, from a perspective by Axel Haig, in Building News, 14 (1867), pp. 306, 308–09; and William Burges, Plan for the new Law Courts, 1866 (Crook, p. 227). [^{^}]
10. Aileen Reid, ‘The Architectural Career of E. W. Godwin’, in Godwin, ed. by Weber Soros, pp. 126–83 (p. 131). Godwin apparently used part of this proposed publication in his articles ‘Odds and Ends about Construction’, and ‘Odds and Ends about Construction II’, Architect (London), 16 (1876), pp. 225–26, 248–49. [^{^}]
11. Mark Girouard, The Victorian Country House (Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 147. [^{^}]
12. Reid, p. 131, n. 55. Burges’s name appears less frequently in Godwin’s diaries between 1873 and 1883. V&A, AAD 4/1-8-1980. [^{^}]
13. E. W. Godwin, Proposed decoration for the fireplace wall in the dining room at Dromore Castle, County Limerick, Ireland, c. 1869, India ink, pen, coloured washes, gouache. London, RIBA, British Architectural Library (RIBA), Drawings Collection, Ran 7/B/I (67). [^{^}]
14. E. W. Godwin, ‘The Home of an English Architect [II]’, Art Journal, 48 (1886), pp. 301–05. [^{^}]
15. E. W. Godwin, Plate 6, ‘Dining Room Furniture’, in William Watt, The Art Furniture Catalogue, from Designs by E. W. Godwin ([n. pub.], 1877); William Burges, The Summer Smoking Room, 1866–72, Cardiff Castle, South Wales, photographed by Michael Statham, The Victorian Web <https://victorianweb.org/art/architecture/burges/9summer.html> [accessed 9 December 2025]. [^{^}]
16. Godwin, ‘Friends in Council’, p. 213. [^{^}]
17. Ibid. The pocket notebooks referred to here are in the RIBA drawings collection housed in the Prints and Drawings Department at the V&A. [^{^}]
18. E. W. Godwin, Sketch of William Burges in Godwin’s sketchbook, 1875, pencil on paper, V&A, E.236-1963:59. [^{^}]
19. E. W. Godwin, ‘The Home of an English Architect I’, Art Journal, 48 (1886), pp. 170–73 (p. 172). [^{^}]
20. E. W. Godwin, ‘The Sister Arts and their Relation to Architecture’, for the Bristol Society of Architects, 1863. This lecture was reproduced as a typeset article, copies of which are in the Royal Institute of British Architects, RIBA Lib. GoE/7/8/2, p. 36. [^{^}]
21. W. Burges, ‘Architectural Drawing’, Papers Read at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA Journal II) (1860–61), pp. 15–28 (p. 23). [^{^}]
22. W. Burges, Art Applied to Industry: A Series of Lectures (Henry and Parker, 1865). [^{^}]
23. Godwin, ‘The Home of an English Architect II’, p. 305. [^{^}]
24. William Burges, The Philosophy Cabinet, 1878–79, guest bedroom at Burges’s home, Tower House, painted by Campbell and Smith with the Trials and Tribulations of Literary Men, RIBApix 7226. [^{^}]
25. E. W. Godwin. Lucretia Cabinet, 1873, made by Collinson & Lock; painted panels by Charles Fairfax Murray, rosewood with painted panels, brass hardware. The Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts General Fund, Honorarium and Memorial Gifts Fund, 1985 (1985.I). [^{^}]
26. See also plates 1 and 10 in Watt, Art Furniture Catalogue. [^{^}]
27. William Burges, Tulip vase, 1874, possibly made in London, Staffordshire, or Shropshire, stoneware, painted, V&A, C. 40-1972. [^{^}]
28. Godwin and William Watt, Vase, one of a pair, 1877, slip over red earthenware, sgraffito decorated with Japanese-inspired motifs, V&A, C.1-2008 (Set). [^{^}]
29. William Burges, An Arts & Crafts twelve-piece tile panel, c. 1880, designed for W. B. Simpson & Sons, painted in shades of blue and yellow, twelve symbols of the zodiac, Gorringes, 2 September 2009, lot 543; attributed to E. W. Godwin, Tiles from a set decorated with birds, c. 1881, made by Minton and Hollins, glazed ceramic, Paul Reeves, London. [^{^}]
30. Burges fire screen, 20th Century Decorative Art & Design, Christie’s London, 25 October 2011, lot 64; E. W. Godwin, Panel, probably for Dromore Castle, c. 1867, leaded stained glass, and coloured glass with prunts, H. Blairman & Sons Ltd. [^{^}]
31. Leaded stained glass, and coloured glass with prunts, E. W. Godwin Furniture (Blairman, 2018), plate 7. [^{^}]
32. William Burges, Brooch, c. 1864, silver and silver-gilt set with turquoise and garnet, V&A, M.8-2012; the design of this brooch is also in the V&A, 8830:11; William Burges, Gold ring set with a cabochon sapphire, c. 1870, made by an unknown goldsmith, England, V&A, M.281-1975. [^{^}]
33. Bed in William Burges’s bedroom at 15 Buckingham Street, London, photograph, Casgliad y Werin Cymru, People’s Collection Wales, NMWA13074; Peacock Cabinet at 15 Buckingham Street, London, photograph, RIBApix 7232. [^{^}]
34. E. W. Godwin, ‘Anglo-Japanese Furniture at Paris Exhibition’, Building News, 34 (1878), p. 603; plates 15 and 16, in Watt, Art Furniture Catalogue. [^{^}]
35. Attributed to E. W. Godwin, Furnishing fabric ‘Butterfly Brocade’, 1874–76, made by Warner and Sons, Spitalfields, jacquard woven silk, V&A, T.152-1972; E. W. Godwin, Sample of furnishing fabric, c. 1870–75, woven by J. W. & C. Ward, Halifax, jacquard woven silk wool and cotton, V&A, T.97-1953. [^{^}]
36. E. W. Godwin, Side table of Northampton Town Hall, 1865, made by Green and King, oak, Northampton Borough Council; E. W. Godwin, Tea table, 1877, made by William Watt, mahogany, private collection; E. W. Godwin, Anglo-Japanese side chair (one of a pair), c. 1875, probably made by William Watt, ebonized wood with cane seat, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, OAO 1302; E. W. Godwin, Old English or Jacobean chair, c. 1867, made by William Watt, ebonized wood, cane seat, private collection; E. W. Godwin, ‘Greek’ side chair, c. 1885, made by William Watt, ash with cane seat, private collection. For more information on Godwin’s furniture, see Susan Weber Soros, The Secular Furniture of E. W. Godwin (For Bard Graduate Center by Yale University Press, 1999), and Weber, E. W. Godwin Furniture. [^{^}]
37. Juliet Kinchin and Paul Stirton, Is Mr Ruskin Living Too Long?: Selected Writings of E. W. Godwin on Victorian Architecture, Design and Culture (White Cockade Publishing, 2005). [^{^}]
38. For a list of Burges’s publications, see Crook, Appendix A, pp. 417–24. [^{^}]
39. Godwin, ‘Friends in Council’, p. 214. [^{^}]
40. Burges, Art Applied to Industry, p. 13. [^{^}]
41. Crook, pp. 95–98; and The Strange Genius of William Burges: ‘Art-Architect’, 1827–1881, ed. by J. Mordaunt Crook (National Museum of Wales, 1981). [^{^}]
42. Bequeathed by William Burges, Back-plate in Maximilian style, c. 1520, steel and leather, London, British Museum, 1881,0802.43; bequeathed by Burges, Kabuto, Edo period, British Museum, 1881, 0802.165. [^{^}]
43. Bequeathed by William Burges, Sard gem engraved with a nude Theban youth half-kneeling and being torn by the Sphinx, 100–300 CE, British Museum, 1881,0725.14; bequeathed by Burges, Mirror-case that depicts Annunciation, 1500, ivory, carved, British Museum, 1879,0203.1; bequeathed by Burges, Casket, date unknown, British Museum, 1881, 0802.16. [^{^}]
44. Ichiyusai Shigenobu, Japanese woodblock print, mid-nineteenth century, V&A, 8827:119:58; Godwin, Crests and other motifs, c. 1870, sketchbook, pencil and watercolour, V&A, E. 280-1963:9; Godwin, ‘Peacock’ wallpaper, c. 1873, made by Jeffrey & Co., block-printed wallpaper, Manchester City Art Galleries. [^{^}]
45. W. Burges, ‘The Japanese Court in the International Exhibition’, Gentleman’s Magazine, 213 (1862), pp. 243–54 (p. 254). [^{^}]
46. Crook, p. 53. [^{^}]
47. V&A PD 93 E.5 (acq. No. 8827). [^{^}]
48. E. W. Godwin, Cabinet known as the ‘Monkey Cabinet’, c. 1876, probably made by William Watt, walnut with carved boxwood insets and ivory handles, V&A, CIRC.34:1 to 7-1958. [^{^}]
49. Godwin, ‘The Home of an English Architect I’, p. 170. [^{^}]
50. ‘Pagan Art’, Builder, 20 (1862), p. 368. This is a report of a lecture given by Burges. [^{^}]
51. Godwin, ‘The Home of an English Architect I’, p. 171. [^{^}]
52. Ibid. [^{^}]
53. ‘Messrs Waugh & Sons’, V&A AAD, 4/12-1980, n.p. [^{^}]
54. E. W. Godwin, Drawing of a tripod table, 1865–80, from a sketchbook, V&A, E.229-1963; E. W. Godwin, Chairs in the Greek style, c. 1873–76, sketchbook (detail), pencil and colour shadings, V&A, E.229:109-1963. [^{^}]
55. E. W. Godwin, Drawings of museum studies, ‘from the Parthenon Marbles’, V&A, PD E472-1963. [^{^}]
56. E. W. Godwin, Design for ‘Anglo-Greek’ dado wallpaper, 1876–78, pencil and watercolour, pen and ink, V&A, E.241-1963:10. [^{^}]
57. Weber Soros, E. W. Godwin, p. 299. [^{^}]
58. E. W. Godwin, Designs for jugs and bowls after Greek vases, c. 1875, pencil, pen and ink, watercolour on paper torn from a sketchbook, V&A, E.471-1963, verso. [^{^}]
59. ‘Ancient Greek, Assyrian and Phoenician Furniture’, [c. 1886], RIBA, Manuscripts Collection, MS GoE/5/1; ‘The Greek Home According to Homer: Its Furniture and the Costume of its Inhabitants’, [c. 1886], RIBA, Manuscripts Collection, MS GoE/5/1; ‘The Greek Home According to Homer’, Nineteenth Century, June 1886, pp. 914–22. [^{^}]
60. Godwin, ‘Friends in Council’, p. 214. [^{^}]
61. W. Burges, ‘Correspondence: “Henry V” at the Queen’s Theatre’, Architect, 16 (1876), p. 188. [^{^}]
62. W. Burges, ‘Archaeology on the Stage II’, Architect, 16 (1876), pp. 238–40. [^{^}]
63. E. W. Godwin, Costumes and set designed for John Todhunter’s play Helena in Troas, 1886, photograph, V&A, S.168-1998; E. W. Godwin, Costume design for Priam in Helena in Troas, 1886, pencil and watercolour on paper, V&A, S.152-1998. [^{^}]
64. E. W. Godwin, Studies of scenery for a production of Shakespeare’s Henry V, 1875–76, pencil, pen, ink and watercolour on paper, V&A, E.279-1963. [^{^}]
65. Scenes from John Todhunter’s Helena in Troas, as performed at Hengler’s Circus, London, 17 May 1886, in ‘Helena in Troas: Sketches’, Queen, 5 June 1886, pp. 264–66 (repr. in Weber Soros, E. W. Godwin, p. 343). [^{^}]
66. W. Burges, ‘Books on Medieval Costume’, Building News and Engineering Journal, 37 (1879), pp. 143–45 (p. 143). [^{^}]
67. Unknown photographer, E. W. Godwin in medieval dress (c. 1861–65). Collection of the National Trust, Ellen Terry Memorial Museum, Smallhythe Place, Kent, SMA PH:122. [^{^}]
68. The Mermaid Bedroom, William Burges’s bedroom in the Tower House, 1878, black and white photo print, RIBA, RIBA7228. [^{^}]
69. Godwin, ‘Friends in Council’, p. 214. [^{^}]
70. Godwin, ‘The Home of an English Architect II’, p. 305. [^{^}]