George Henry Walton

George Henry Walton (3 June 1867 Glasgow – 10 December 1933 London), was a noted Scottish architect and designer of remarkable diversity.

George was the youngest of twelve talented children of Jackson Walton, a Manchester commission agent and himself an accomplished painter and photographer, by his second wife, the Aberdeen-born Quaker Eliza Ann Nicholson. George was a brother of the painter Edward Arthur Walton of the Glasgow School.

His father's death in 1873 left the family in straitened circumstances, and at the age of thirteen George started work as a clerk with the British Linen Bank. With a view to a different career, he attended art classes in the evenings at the Glasgow School of Art and with Peter McGregor Wilson (1856–1928) at the short-lived Glasgow Atelier of Fine Arts. When he was commissioned to redesign one of Miss Cranston's tea rooms at 114 Argyle Street in Glasgow, Walton started his own decorating company, George Walton & Co, Ecclesiastical and House Decorators, in 1888 at 152 Wellington Street. He was greatly influenced by both James Whistler and William Morris and his work ventured into almost every avenue of decorative art, helping to pioneer the distinctive Glasgow Style. In 1890 he employed Robert Graham, the future manager of the company in 1903–05, and met the Quaker architect Fred Rowntree (1860–1927) at an amateur dramatic performance. On 3 June 1891 Walton married Kate Gall, a London girl from an affluent family, and moved into Charing Cross Mansions. Their daughter was born in 1892.

The firm rapidly diversified, winning commissions in woodwork, furniture making and stained glass. From 1896 Walton partnered Rowntree in Rowntree family projects in Scarborough. In the same year he decorated and furnished Miss Cranston's Buchanan Street tea room, originally designed by George Washington Browne. In 1897 he joined his brother Edward in London and set up house and studio at 16 Westbourne Park Road, Bayswater. In London he, through his friendship with the Glasgow photographer James Craig Annan, designed a salon in the Dudley Gallery and met George Davison (1854–1930) who was employed by Eastman Kodak. Through him Walton was commissioned to design not only Kodak showrooms in the United Kingdom and Europe (London, Glasgow, Brussels, Milan, Vienna and Moscow), which brought him international fame, but also the company's product packaging.

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