Nelson Dawson (1859-1942) was a distinguished painter, silversmith and jeweller of the English Arts & Crafts movement. He trained as an architect and then studied painting at the South Kensington Schools. In 1881 he took up metalworking. He studied enamelling under Alexander Fisher and, after his marriage in 1893, set up a workshop with his wife Edith Robinson whom he taught enamelling and who subsequently carried out the enamelled decoration which is a characteristic feature of much of his work. In 1901 he set up the Artificers’ Guild in his Chiswick workshop, but it passed into the possession of Montague Fordham in 1903. Nelson Dawson gave up metalworking in 1914 and devoted the rest of his life to painting.