Rupert Williamson
Rupert Williamson (born 1945) has been a Designer and creator of one-off furniture for over 40 years with work in many museums and public collections, together with his work written about and illustrated in many books and articles.In 1999 he received a PhD for his thesis “New Forms of Imagery in Furniture". The Reflections of a Designer working in the Craft Revival of the 1970s and beyond” together with a major collection of his designs.
He studied at High Wycombe and The Royal College of Art that he left in 1971. In the first major showing of his work in 1976 at an alumni exhibition, a chair was bought for the Victoria and Albert Museum collection. After this first exhibition his work was to be seen in Sloane Square, London, magazines and books and was shown in most of the major galleries in the UK including The Crafts Council Gallery, London Prescote Gallery, Banbury, the Contemporary Applied Arts Gallery, London.
He has created furniture mainly for individual customers, such as Christopher Lloyd at Great Dixter, which is open to the public, also in combination with other artists he has worked on a number of large public commissions, including Milton Keynes Art Gallery, Norwich Museum, and Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham.
After the storms in England of 1987, The Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, London, held an exhibition pieces of furniture made from the timber blown down. Rupert Williamson made three tables from this wood, two being bought for museums collections with the other one sold at Bonhams.
His work has been collected for many public collections and museums including the Victoria and Albert, Fitzwilliam, Cambridge, and Royal Scottish Museum. In 2012 David Savage produced a book ‘Furniture with Soul” [13] detailing ten of the top furniture designer craftsmen in the world today that work in wood. Rupert Williamson was included alongside Garry Knox Bennett, John Cederquist, John Makepeace.
Most recently Rupert Williamson has written a fully illustrated book that surveys his work from 1962 detailing his influences and the various themes explaining in detail the way he works through sketching model making and computer aided design. The book also contains a fully illustrated catalogue of his entire output.
Rupert Williamson was born in 1945 and is married with two children.
1999 PhD. University of Teesside. “New Forms of Imagery in Furniture. The Reflections of a Designer working in the Craft Revival of the 1970’s and beyond”
1971 M(des)RCA Royal College Art Furniture Design
1968 DipA/D High Wycombe College of Art and Technology, now New Bucks University
Williamson, Rupert (2014). The Furniture of Rupert Williamson, Duval & Hamilton. ISBN
1988 Public Award at Sotheby’s Award Exhibition
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