Cecilia Rexworthy introduces the work of Watts & Co as the firm celebrates its 150th anniversary.
If you wander past Westminster Abbey, and through the mellow stone archway of Dean’s Yard, through the throng of jostling pupils of nearby Westminster School, and onto Tufton Street, your eye may casually stray into an open doorway. A staircase leading down to two unassuming glazed doors suddenly opens out onto a veritable explosion of colour, as gorgeous as it is unexpected. Amid the buildings of Church and State nestles the long-established (but still relatively unknown) Watts & Co.
Watts & Co was born out of a desire by its founders, three eminent Victorian architects, to furnish their beautiful buildings with equally beautiful things: fabrics, vestments, wall hangings, wallpapers. Not finding suitably refined and tasteful objects they set up their own company. The gentlemen in question were three of the most important Gothic Revival architects of the 19th century: George Frederick Bodley, Thomas Garner and George Gilbert Scott Jr. Thus, in 1874, a powerhouse of design and craftsmanship emerged to rival William Morris and his contemporaries.
No one is quite sure where the name originated, maybe from a witticism, “Watts in a name?”, or from a reluctance by the gentlemen-artist-architects to lend their own names to trade. A clerical neighbour was a Mr Watts, so perhaps it was a nod to him. Whatever the case, from 1880 passers-by were treated to a sumptuous store front at its original premises at 30 Baker Street. Watts & Co established its own school of embroidery where the ancient and intricate craft of hand embroidery was honoured and passed down.
The firm soon became known for the quality and splendour of its embroideries: a welcome rediscovery of the medieval Opus Anglicanum for which England was once famed, and a key component of the Gothic Revival’s interest in medieval textiles and the new-found enthusiasm for neo-Gothic, a truly English style in both ecclesiastical and secular settings.
Gilbert Scott Jr’s father had already contributed significantly to this enthusiasm for the Gothic. Sir George Gilbert Scott was for a time Surveyor of the Works at Westminster Abbey; he was a renowned architect who left behind many iconic structures. Scott Jr was as vastly talented as his father, but on a different course – especially after he encountered Cardinal (now St) John Henry Newman. Gilbert Scott Jr later recalled that after their meeting “all the difficulties, uncertainties and indecision of the years were but a phantom,” and in 1880 he became a Catholic. It was a brave step, as he could have been in no doubt about the potentially negative impact it would have on his personal and professional life.
His conversion caused a breach with his family and he also lost a large part of his architectural client base. Thankfully, one wealthy Catholic client was to give Scott Jr one of the largest commissions of his career. In 1882, with the funds supplied by Henry Fitzalan-Howard, 15th Duke of Norfolk, he was chosen to build the church of St John the Baptist in Norwich, England, now the cathedral of the diocese of East Anglia.
Meanwhile, Watts & Co continued to thrive. It was propelled into the limelight with the creation of vestments for Queen Victoria’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees, and the royal coronations that followed. These splendid vestments were a great advertisement for the company, whose style was adopted by parishes and cathedrals across the United Kingdom.
Fast forward a generation, and the design and architectural genius flourished once more in one of George Jr’s sons, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. In 1903, at the tender age of 22, he won the competition to design Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral: a controversial decision as he was not only untested, but also a Catholic. He went on to design Battersea Power Station in London, Waterloo Bridge and the smallest but arguably best known of his projects: the famous red telephone boxes. Less well known is his work on Catholic churches in the UK, among which are examples of some of the finest Catholic architecture of the 20th century.
Busy with his architectural career, Giles offered the running of Watts to his niece Elizabeth Scott – another grandchild of George Gilbert Scott Jr. She and her husband, Graham Hoare, became proprietors of Watts & Co in the 1950s. Elizabeth was determined and far-sighted enough to rescue, preserve and revive the interest in the beautiful Victorian ecclesiastical needlework and vestments which had been neglected over the previous decades.
By the time of the Hoares’s arrival, Watts & Co had, like so many other businesses, suffered in the 1930s. However, through sheer will and a passionate belief in the need for beauty, the company experienced a revival and Watts & Co accomplished the coup of winning the commission to create the vestments and furnishings for the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
Watts became unique in its output and the wealth of its talent. The Hoares snapped up skilled embroiderers and craftspeople from other ecclesiastical firms which were closing in the rapidly changing religious landscape of the 1960s and 1970s. The company trod a considered design path avoiding the more revolutionary styles and synthetic textiles of the new era, instead making sure the vestments and furnishings were in harmony with the churches and interiors for which they were destined. This was an intelligent and far-sighted vision, a reminder to the war-weary world that the ideals of beauty and craftmanship, as espoused by the Gothic Revivalists, were as vital as ever.
The growth of the company saw the eventual move to its current premises in Tufton Street, in the shadow of Westminster Abbey. A division of its ecclesiastical and interior businesses was favoured, and the latter took the name Watts 1874. Now led by Elizabeth’s grandson Robert Hoare, also a Catholic, Watts & Co has rapidly expanded and gained clients all over the world, notably in the USA and Australia.
“When I joined the company in 2011 only 8 people worked here,” Robert explains. “Now there are 34 of us with an average age of 25–30. People who come to us discover a craftmanship here which has been carefully preserved from generation to generation.’
Watts’s approach and practice is as countercultural now as it was in 1874. In an age of cost hypersensitivity, it continues to weave its own silks in England and handmakes its vestments in London. This does inevitably entail a certain financial reality for the client. However, this is not an elite aestheticism for its own sake, rather a belief in the value of the work of human hands for the glory of God.
The story of St John Vianney continues to inspire. Despite the poverty of his parish the Curé d’Ars saw to it that his small church lacked for nothing. He inspired the generosity of the local baron and set to repairing and decorating the church with the finest banners, furnishing and vestments from Paris and Lyon. Nothing was too beautiful for le ménage du Bon Dieu.
Here was a truly humble priest, clothing not himself but his priesthood in the finest fabrics and embroidery of the time. The office of the priesthood and the worship of the Divine called for this approach; the beauty of God’s house and his worship therein was a form of apostolate in an otherwise bleak landscape.
It is a sign of hope that a remarkable area of growth has been among more traditionally-minded younger clergy. A new generation of priests have taken to heart the message of Benedict XVI – “the Benedict Bounce” – that beauty is not mere decoration but rather an essential element of the liturgical action.
Stepping away from the faux-humility of the 1970s polyester sacristy wardrobes, a desire has been growing to create an aesthetic environment less unworthy of the transcendence of liturgical action, alongside a rediscovery that the Mass is not spiritually-themed entertainment where Father gets to display his personal tastes in dress, music and compering, but rather a solemn act of worship which is greater than the individuals present.
This work of a small team in a hidden corner of London has touched on this essential thirst for beauty and the transcendent. Its textiles and vestments have reached across the world to the rest of Europe, to Africa, Australia and the United States. These are signs of hope, an answering to the call to rediscover the dignity and beauty of the liturgy.
A delegation from Watts & Co attended the Napa Institute Conference in 2023. Watts’s presence was noted and appreciated, as it showcased what was still possible in the area of textiles and embroidery at the service of the Church. A large US seminary, intent on improving the solemnity of their liturgies, commissioned Watts & Co to overhaul its vestment collection with noble fabrics and skilled needlework. Commissions come in from all over the world for Watts’s fabrics and vestments, with personal touches added such as embroidered inscriptions and custom-weave silks.
Celebrating 150 years since its foundation, Watts & Co honours the ethos of its founders and remains an oasis where “the work of human hands” continues to be directed towards the good and the beautiful. If JRR Tolkien would forgive the appropriation and application of his words, beauty “allows us to escape the boundaries of time and space, and to remind us that we are made for the eternal”.
Cecilia Rexworthy is head of research and product development at Watts & Co: www.wattsandco.com
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