John Aldam Heaton (1830 – 1897) was a designer of textiles, furniture, wall-paper, stained glass, as well as a watercolour artist. Although not born in the Bradford district, his time living at Harden, near Bingley between 1860 and 1876 was a particularly formative one for his career as a designer.
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He was born on the 5th February 1830 in Leeds. His father, also called John, was a ‘stuff’ or cloth merchant, and John Aldam was the youngest of three children. His mother, Sarah, died shortly after his birth. The family originally lived in South Parade, Leeds, but later moved to the Little Woodhouse area of the city.
As he advanced in his career he used his middle name Aldam instead of John. When interviewed toward the end of his life by Mabel Cox for The Artist, he felt that “his natural bent had manifested itself very early in life”: by the age of four, he was already using watercolours to paint landscape scenes. Cox reported that, ‘as he grew up he felt more and more certain that that he must adopt some artistic profession’, but his father objected, and directed his son into a business career in the local textile industry (Cox, 1897).
Aldam began work as a clerk in a textile merchants, but in his leisure hours he continued to paint, and was largely self taught – he told Mabel Cox that he had ‘only had six art lessons in his whole life’. He was drawn to the study of nature, particularly plant and flower forms, and his clerical work in the textile merchants introduced him to textile patterns, many of which were inspired by natural forms. He began to channel his art talent into creating his own textile designs, and in 1846, aged 16, created a ‘Pomegranate’ design for his employer (see below)
This design became commercially successful and when his employer closed the business, the textile manufacturer who subsequently bought the pattern offered Aldam work as a textile designer. This was the start of his career in design.
It was also a significant period for the development of design for manufacturing in Britain. The Great Exhibition in London in 1851, whilst showcasing British manufactured products, also highlighted the poor British designs on show compared to those from other parts of Europe, particularly France and Italy. The exhibition galvanised a new approach to British design and sparked the beginnings of the Aesthetic Movement and the Arts and Crafts Movement that Aldam later championed.
In addition to his textile work, Aldam, a spiritual man, began to research ecclesiastical designs and continued in his leisure to develop his talent for watercolour painting. In 1855 he married Ellen Morley, a governess for a family in Leeds, and they had two daughters, Winifred, born in 1856 and Monica, 1859. Ellen was a skilled embroiderer and later helped to create textiles from her husband’s designs.
By this time Aldam had branched out to open his own textile manufacturing mill: Beehive Mills at Great Horton, Bradford. Here he was able to produce textiles using his own designs. The family lived in Bradford at first then around 1860 moved to Wood Bank, near Harden.
Because of his interest in trends in art and design, Aldam Heaton became drawn to the work of the Pre-Raphaelite group of painters. Ellen too, had acquired some drawings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who by this time had formed a close friendship with William Morris. Morris, who became a significant figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement, was rapidly building a nationwide reputation as a designer/craftsman dedicated to recapturing the spirit and quality of medieval craftsmanship.
Aldam was well-aware of Morris’ work and had already supplied him with fabrics. He recommended to Bradford Parish Church (later Cathedral), that was seeking to replace the stained glass in a number of windows, that the glass panels should come from the recently-established workshop of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. of London. Rossetti, along with other Pre-Raphaelite artists, including Ford Madox Brown and Edward Burne-Jones, were involved in the designs, and the windows were subsequently fitted between 1863-4.
This was an important early commission for Morris, shown right, and led to other commissioned projects in the district, notably for Walter Dunlop, another wool merchant and a close neighbour of the Heaton family at Harden. The thirteen designs, based on the story of Tristram and Iseult from Malory’s King Arthur romances, included two panels designed by Rossetti. These were designed for windows at Harden Grange, Dunlop’s home, and are currently on display at Cliffe Castle, Keighley.
Rossetti, shown left, was invited to Wood Bank and spent a month there during which time he painted a portrait of Mrs Heaton as Regina Cordium (Queen of Hearts) that later formed the subject of a stained-glass window commissioned for Woodbank, along with two small side panels depicting the Heaton’s daughters, Winfred and Monica.
Rossetti also designed six stained glass panels for Wood Bank depicting the legend of St. George. These were made at the Morris workshops in London (Marsh, 2015).
Preliminary sketch of Ellen Heaton for his Regina Cordium painting
Rossetti-designed stained glass depicting Ellen Heaton & her daughters. Image: William Morris Museum, London.
During his time at Harden, Aldam attended worship at the newly built Holy Trinity Church, Bingley, where he became a churchwarden. Using an elaborate quatrefoil pattern as a guide, he designed the Rose Window that was also made by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in London. Other stained glass in the church – a crucifixion – was designed by Edward Coley Burne-Jones, another Pre-Raphaelite artist closely associated with William Morris.
Aldam Heaton, encouraged by his contacts with Rossetti and Morris, was already beginning to think beyond his career in the mill. When the School of Art Needlework (later the Royal School of Needlework) was founded in 1872, he and Ellen became actively involved with it, travelling regularly to London to supply designs for the embroiders and advising on production of the finished work.
This was a turning point in his life, and in 1876 Aldam moved to London with his family to work as a designer for the interior of buildings, including homes and churches. This now included bespoke designs for furniture, friezes, stained glass, carpet, and wallpaper, including in 1880 a pattern dedicated to Rossetti (see below) that he executed in 1884 for the hallway of a country house in Wellesley, Massachusetts, USA.
Rossetti design. Image: in a private collection.
The Heaton family set up home at 29 Bloomsbury Square, along with four live-in servants. Aldam worked at first in his home and engaged a small staff of assistant designers to help him. He exhibited furniture and embroidery designs in the 1878 Paris Exhibition, and commissions soon flowed his way, requiring him to set up a workshop and studio nearby at 21-23 Bloomsbury Street, Bedford Square, often collaborating with the architect, Richard Norman Shaw.
He managed the Bedford Square workshop on the ‘work-pleasure’ principal advocated by William Morris, where workers were encouraged to use their skills to the full and where the social hierarchy between manager and the workforce is reduced. His wallpaper designs were chosen to suit the space in question and often made by use of stencils to produce bespoke work.
Wallpaper Design by Aldam Heaton. Image: V&A.
Below: an Arts & Crafts embroidered patchwork bedcover designed by Aldam Heaton (1830-1897) and worked by his sister Fanny Heaton (1828-1893). Image: in a private collection.
His reputation as a designer became firmly established in the annual London Arts and Crafts Exhibitions from 1888 onward. Between 1888 and 1893 many of his designs featured in the exhibitions, including designs for wallpaper, carpets, decorative panels, screens, friezes and stained glass. Ellen Heaton contributed embroidered work using her husband’s designs on a number of occasions, including at the first exhibition in 1888, when a screen panel, embroidered on silk, made by Ellen was shown. Aldam also travelled regularly in Italy, where he studied past design and decoration as a source of inspiration for his own work.
He also exhibited watercolour paintings on three occasions at Royal Academy shows in the late 1880s, drawing praise for his use of light and colour.
Heaton becoming increasingly interested and specialist in church decoration and embroidery, and advertisements regularly appeared in the press seeking ecclesiastical commissions.
He worked closely with architects, and his contacts led in 1880/1 to a commission to paint a crucifixion scene above the chancel arch in the Holy Trinity Church, Littlebury, near Saffron Walden in Essex (see below).
Image: Littlebury Parish: littlebury.org.uk
He was also commissioned to design the chancel interior, including curtains at St. James and St Thomas Church, Hebden Bridge & Heptonstall, West Yorkshire. His principal idea, expressed later in his book, Beauty and Art, was to introduce ‘colour and softness and variety of form’ into otherwise bare sanctuaries.
In 1887 he designed the embroidered green Dossal at the Lower Tatham Church, Tattam, near Lancaster (see below). This was one of the commissions that the Foster family of Hornby Castle gave to Heaton, which also included all the decorative brass and fabrics; the alms bowl; frontal and superfrontal for the altar; hassocks; altar kneelers; communicant mats; collection bags; embroidered cloths for hanging in the piscina and sedilia, and side hangings to the altar. The Fosters also used his fabric designs in nearby Hornby church in 1890 (Winstanley, 2018). The Dossal is now a rare example of his embroidered design work still on public view today.
Embroidered Dossal, Lower Tatham Church. Image: www.tathamhistory.org.uk
In 1891 he was commissioned to design the interior decorations for Urrbrae House, Adelaide, Australia. The impressive two story bluestone mansion was the home of Peter and Matilda Waite. Peter Waite was an affluent sheep farmer, property developer, and art collector and this was a significant commission for Aldam outside of Britain and highlighted the extent of his reputation by this time. The photograph below illustrates the main entrance to the house and shows original ceiling papers designed by Heaton, as well as some of the ornate woodwork in cedar and blackwood.
Aldam Heaton also wrote books propounding his view of art and design. Beauty and Art (1889) encouraged readers to look to nature for inspiration on form and subtleties of colour gradation. It can still be found in reprint form today, and was influential then, and even now, in helping readers distinguish between passing fashion and the more enduring ‘good taste’.
This was followed by Furniture and Decoration in England during the Eighteenth Century (1889), acclaiming the work of traditional British furniture makers and designers, and in particular Chippendale, Sheraton and Heppelwhite. In 1895 his Designs and Decorations: (Chimney-pieces, Ornamental Lattice, Wall-papers, Frieze Painting, Blinds, Carpets, Furniture, Designs for Needlework, Embroidery, Curtains, Church Work, Stained Glass, Painting) was published and pulled together all his lifetime design interests and ideas.
Toward the end of his life, Aldam and Ellen moved to Hampstead, where he died on 20th November, 1897. After his death, his company, Aldam Heaton & Co., became part of White Star Line and designed interiors for White Star Liners, including The Olympic and the fated Titanic. Ellen Heaton died in 1906.
Examples of Aldam Heaton’s wallpaper designs can be found today in the V&A, and designs for needlework, embroidery, curtains, church work, stained glass are held in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), New York.
See also extracts from Aldam Heaton’s book, Beauty and Art, at My Art : Aldam Heaton
References
Cox, M. (1897) The Artist. London, England: A. Constable (online via littlebury.org.uk; see below)
Litterbury Parish (2015) John Aldam Heaton: the Pre-Raphaelites, Titanic and the chancel arch at Holy Trinity. Online at littlebury.org.uk (also see source above).
Marsh, J. (2014) Rossetti’s Obsession: Images of Jane Morris. Bradford Museums & Galleries.
Winstanley, M. 2018, Tatham History Society, www.tathamhistory.org.uk