Perhaps your relaunch will include 1.An illustration of the Japanese kettle Dresser 'copied'- something he advised against.2.The source of your claim that Dresser collected items for the V&A. 3.The source of your claim that Dresser sold his designs from the Japanese town (village surely?)at Muswell Hill. 3.Unless you can provide new evidence, Dresser's signature provided a guarantee of genuineness.4.Evidence that Dresser folowed Morris - my books suggest the exact opposite.

Anonymous, July 8, 2009 18:57

the Japanese visitors identified the kettle as a Japanese design, I have never seen an exact version but there are certainly many illustrations in many of the books on Dresser of almost exact copies of many items, often (if you want to pick nits)in different materials from the original. This seems an odd point to make, what is wrong with copies or versions of, surely that's how culture evolves and has always evolved, versions of things produced by other cultures often drawn from misunderstandings.
The Lawson Park collections entries are not trying to be minutely accurate, the general idea is to make connections and use the material to inspire new ideas and works. If people would like to correct the facts that would be great, your comment doesn't actually tell us anything, not even the title of your book, I would for one be very interested to read about the relationship between Dresser and Morris or indeed Dresser and Ruskin - most people I have asked have said there wasn't any. With regard to the other points I think I will have picked these up from stuff I've read, please do inform us if these are significant errors that make a difference to how Dresser is understood. You can of course use truths to create meaningless nonsense.

Anonymous, July 14, 2009 19:09