James Kellaway Colling

James Kellaway Colling
The Albany Building, Old Hall Street, Liverpool
Born	1816 ?London, England
Died	1905 ?London, England
Nationality	English
Alma mater	Pupil of Mathew Habershon; John Brown and John Colson (of Norwich).
Occupation	Architect
Practice	Office of Sir George Gilbert Scott 1841-2.
Buildings	The Albany, Liverpool; Garthmyl Hall, Montgomeryshire and Ashwicke Hall, Marshfield, Gloucestershire

James Kellaway Colling (1816–1905) or J. K. Colling was a London architect, watercolour artist and noted book illustrator. He was a pioneer of early Chromolithographic printing and his graphic work has been compared with that of William Morris and John Ruskin

Initially Colling trained as an engineer and then from 1832 worked in the architectural office of Mathew Habershon (1789–1852) Habershon was talented artist and an early enthusiast for timber framed houses, publishing in 1836 The Ancient Half Timbered Houses of England. Between 1836 and 1840 he moved to Norwich to work under firstly John Brown and then, John Colson, who specialised in Church architecture, and it was during this period that Colling started preparing his illustrations of painted church furnishings and sculpture in East Anglian Churches.

Initially Colling does not appear to have had much success as an architect and he may instead have been concentrating on architectural illustration. He took pupils in to teach them architectural drawing. These pupils included William Eden Nesfield and the future American architect John Hubbard Sturgis. It is as a pioneer of chromolithographic printing that Colling must be particularly remembered. The technique of chromolithography, or using lithography for colour printing, had spread to Britain from Europe in the mid-1840s. This provided Colling an opportunity to illustrate the painted Medieval screens or encaustic floor tiles that he had recorded in East Anglian churches. His first volume of Gothic Ornaments: Being a Series of Examples of Enriched Details and Accessories of the Architecture of Great Britain appeared in 1838 and was an early venture of the publisher George Bell. Like Ruskin, he despised whitewash, proclaiming in Chapter II of his second volume: "That love of white wash, to which the Church Wardens of the last century were so pertinaciously addicted, was a puritanical notion, which was, probably, handed down to them from the time of the Reformation; and the sooner it is altogether got rid of along with the white ceilings of our dwelling houses, the better". He then went on until 1865 publishing a series of books on Medieval detailing and decoration using many coloured prints. In the introduction to the first volume of Gothic Ornament, Colling mentions the support he has been given by Ewan Christian and it is likely that Christian used Colling's design for the Commissioners' churches. Later, when Christian in 1895 designed the west front of the National Portrait Gallery, Colling provided drawings for the detailing. In later life Colling devoted more time to producing watercolours of London buildings and street scenes.