Trowel, silver, enamel, probably designed by Walter Gilbert of the Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Arts, 1904, inscribed 'Presented to Princess Henry of Battenberg on the occasion of laying the foundation stone, National Nautical School, Portishead, Bristol, July 14th, 1904.' / 'B.G.A.A.'

Trowel, silver, with curved, triangular blade with moulded top and cast handle with a sculptural figure holding a wreath at the top. The blade has an enamelled plaque depicting the ship, HMS Formidable, and the back of the blade is inscribed, 'Presented to Princess Henry of Battenberg on the occasion of laying the foundation stone, National Nautical School, Portishead, Bristol, July 14th, 1904.' / 'B.G.A.A.' Made to a design by Walter Gilbert of the Bromsgrove School of Applied Art, 1904

Donated in memory of the late Robert David Vincent Garnett, a great grandson of Henry Fedden of Bristol who founded the National Nautical School in 1869

The silver and enamelled trowel was commissioned for the laying of the foundation stone of the National Nautical College, Portishead, Bristol by Princess Henry of Battenberg on 14th July 1904. The large brick Nautical College replaced, a former warship HMS (later TS) Formidable that from 1869 was moored 400 metres offshore from the Black Nore Lighthouse, Portishead and housed boys largely from deprived backgrounds who has been convicted of petty crimes and faced a tough life on board the ship learning trade and survival skills. Several photographs survive of the ship moored offshore and one has been used to design the enamel plaque on the trowel.

In 1904 the ship was scrapped and the nautical school was built. It survives today as Fedden Village, a residential estate named after Henry Fedden of Bristol who founded the school. The donor's late husband, David Garnett was the eldest great-grandson of Henry Fedden giving the trowel an unsually complete and uncomplicated provenance.

The trowel is characteristic of the work of Walter Gilbert (1871-1946), a significant figure in the Arts and Crafts movement. In 1898, Gilbert founded the Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Art which, unusually, survived right up until 1966. Gilbert assembled a group of highly skilled artists who were based around the country working in different materials. Gilbert directly headed the metalwork school which incorporated a broad range of output from large scale ironwork to delicate silver jewellery. Under Gilbert's direction, the guild worked on important commissions including the W.G. Grace Gates at Lord's Cricket Ground, bronze doors for the Bank of England, street lighting in Parliament Street and perhaps most famously the Liver Birds on top of the Liver Building at Liverpool. Gilbert also worked closely on several commissions with the architect, Aston Webb, and together they produced the gates and railings in front of Buckingham Palace.

Other Gilbert items in the collection include one item directly attibutable to Gilbert, a bronze frieze panel of 1933 placed over a lift in the Derry & Toms building, Kensington High Street (Museum no. M.262-1984). His sculptural designs for statuary are represented in 14 photographs beqeathed in 1938 by Kineton Parkes. The Bromsgrove Guild is represented by a small comb of ivory mounted in silver and set with mother-of-pearl, sapphires, green stained chalcedony and opal by Josef Hodel (M.18-1939) and a small bronze plaquette commemorating the centenary of William Crawford & Sons, biscuit manufacturers in Edinburgh, Liverpool and London (A.28-1978).

The trowel is significant both in terms of its design and well-documented history. It is a rare example of Bromsgrove Guild silver designed by the head of the Guild, Walter Gilbert, probably in collaboration with Swiss modeller, Louis Weingartner (1863-1934), with an enamel plaque that further research may be able to pin down to Ernest Charles Jeffries (1869-1942). Its inscription also records its presentation to 'Princess Henry of Battenberg on the occasion of laying the foundation stone, National Nautical School, Portishead, Bristol, July 14th, 1904', who then gave it to Henry Fedden, the founder of the school, whose family kept the trowel as an heirloom until its donation to the V&A.

In an article in the American magazine, 'The Craftsman', Volume IV, Number 2 in May 1903, Gilbert wrote that what made the Bromsgrove Guild stand out was its focus on designing according to the nature of the materials to be employed. He was critical of specialist, 19th-century designers. 'Decoration, such as was produced, came from the artist-designer, who worked chiefly on paper, and possessed little more than a superficila knowledge of materials and of processes. Thus the decoration then employed resulted from the more or less unsympathetic attempt of a workman to put into visible form the conception of a thinker unfamiliar with the nature, possibilities and limitations of material, and of the technical processes involved in production. The blending oof the maker with the thinker means the abolition of much of the dreary labour and routne of the workman. But to accomplish this desirable purpose with any degree of fulness, men of educatin and refinement must enter the ranks of workmen. It will then, and then only, be possible to infuse into the arts of material production something of the life and spirit which characterize the best work of the past.' Alhtough this trowel has many of the flowing lines and sinuous forms associated with Art Nouveau styles, Gilbert railed against the aesthetic describing ti as 'perhaps the most distressing and repellant expression of the borrowed originality affecting modern taste.' His Bromsgrove Guild was established 'to combat this evil, to substitute activity for the stagnation of commercialism.'

Under Gilbert the guild encouraged the revival old old crafts like wood engraving, plaster production, embroidery and enamelling. They exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1900 and , according to Gilbert, 'received the most favourable comment from the best French critics.' Ernest Charles Jeffries (1869-1942), may be reponsible for the enamelled plaque on the trowel. He was born locally, studied at Birmingham School of Art and taught at the Bromsgrove School of Art under Gilbert. He was recorded as a metalworker and enameller for the Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Art from around 1902. Similar plaques have been noted with his ECJ monogram on them.

This silver and enamelled trowel was commissioned for the laying of the foundation stone of the National Nautical College, Portishead, Bristol by Princess Henry of Battenberg on 14th July 1904. The large brick Nautical College replaced, a former warship HMS (later TS) Formidable that, from 1869, was moored 400 metres offshore from the Black Nore Lighthouse, Portishead. The ship is depicted on the enamelled plaque on the trowel.

The trowel is a rare example of silver by the Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Art and was designed by the school's head, Walter Gilbert, probably in collaboration with Swiss modeller, Louis Weingartner. The enamel plaque is possibly the work of Ernest Charles Jeffries who began enamelling for the Guild in 1902.

M.14-2025