Blog
20. Ruskin’s Coins
Among the numerous treasures Ruskin acquired for himself and the public in the course of his long life, from books to botanical specimens, shells to stones, and manuscripts to minerals, his horde of coins is one of the least well-known and appreciated of his...
19. Global Ruskin: the return to nature (part 1)
In the first of a new series of occasional blogs exploring Ruskin’s global reach, I focus on how Ruskin was celebrated as an Apostle of Beauty calling on Europe to reject modern industrial capitalism and return to nature. A brief look at two Czech readers of Ruskin...
18. The Ruskinian Benefactor: Florence Bennett
To Dr Sara Atwood, Scholar, Teacher, and Dear Friend. Early in 1885 John Ruskin’s utopian society, the Guild of St George, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, issued a Master’s Report. In an account appended by senior trustee, George Baker (1825-1910),...
17. The Ruskinian Industrialist
This is a year of Ruskinian anniversaries. Two of them—the 150th anniversary of John Ruskin’s Guild of St George, and the centenary of the death of the pioneering Yorkshire businessman, George Thomson—have prompted me to write, and the Guild to publish, a new...
16. The Ruskinian Shopkeeper
It is one of the unaccountable facts of Ruskin scholarship that many of John Ruskin’s keenest admirers have barely registered in the histories of his influence. A notable example is Stephen Rowland (1841-1940) (pictured below), an early and long-serving Companion of...
15. Ruskin’s Seven Lamps
The Power of Influence: J. H. Chamberlain & Ruskin’s Seven Lamps Stuart Eagles To Clive Wilmer [Download as a PDF] John Henry Chamberlain (1831-1883) (pictured above) was one of Birmingham’s most eminent architects. A leading Liberal, a talented lecturer, and a...
14. The First General Meetiing of the Guild
“An excess of modesty and bashfulness”: the first meeting of Ruskin’s Guild Stuart Eagles To Annie Creswick Dawson, Guild Companion and Dear Friend [Read as a PDF] No detailed account of the Guild’s inaugural general meeting has ever been published. Until now. For...
13. Ruskinian Redlands
(Dedicated to Anthony Harris and Cedric Quayle.) Milestone birthdays will be celebrated this summer by several veteran contributors to the work of Ruskin’s Guild of St George, an organisation which is itself celebrating its sesquicentenary this year. Two such...
12. Ruskin as an Oxford Lecturer
Descriptions abound of Ruskin as a lecturer at Oxford. As a student Michael Sadler (1861—1943) greatly admired Ruskin, and he became his life-long disciple. Sadler, who was a historian, dedicated his career to education, and served for many years as a university...
11. The Ruskinian Spinster
Edith Hope Scott was one of Ruskin’s most devoted and active disciples. St George’s Day in the year in which we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Guild of St George seems an appropriate moment to remember her. Scott was one of the people who banded together in...