Joseph Strutt (engraver and antiquary)

Joseph Strutt
Frontispiece from the 1802 edition of Strutt's 1801 book, The sports and pastimes of the people of England from the earliest period.
Born	27 October 1749 Chelmsford, Essex
Died	16 October 1802 (1802-10-17) (aged 52)
Nationality	English
Known for	Engraver, antiquary, artist, writer

book, The sports and pastimes of the people of England from the

Joseph Strutt (27 October 1749 – 16 October 1802) was an English engraver, artist, antiquary and writer. He is today most significant as the earliest and "most important single figure in the investigation of the costume of the past", making him "an influential but totally neglected figure in the history of art in Britain", according to Sir Roy Strong.

Strutt was born at Springfield Mill in Chelmsford, Essex, the youngest son of Thomas Strutt and his wife Elizabeth (daughter of John Ingold, miller, of Woodham Walter, near Maldon, Essex) – the mill belonged to his father, a wealthy miller. When he was little more than a year old, his father died, leaving his mother to bring up him and his brother John – the latter, a year or two older, went on to become a physician in Westminster, London. Strutt was educated at King Edward's school, Chelmsford (where there is a house named after him), and at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to the engraver William Wynne Ryland.

In 1770, he became a student at the Royal Academy in London, and was awarded one of the first silver medals to be presented by the Academy; the following year he took one of the first gold medals. From 1771 he began to study in the reading-room of the British Museum, where he gathered the materials for most of his antiquarian works. His first book, The Regal and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of England, appeared in 1773. For this, the first work of its kind published in England, he drew and engraved from ancient manuscripts representations of kings, costumes, armour, seals, and other objects of interest.

He spent the greater part of his life in similar labours, his art in service to his antiquarian and literary researches. Between 1774 and 1776 he published the three volumes of his Manners, Customs, Arms, Habits etc. of the People of England, and in 1777–8 the two volumes of his Chronicle of England, both large quarto works, profusely illustrated, and involving a vast amount of research. Of the former a French edition appeared in 1789. The latter Strutt originally intended to extend to six volumes, but he failed to obtain adequate support. At this period he lived partly in London and partly at Chelmsford, but made frequent journeys for the purposes of antiquarian study.