ARCHIBALD KNOX (1864-1933)
Decanter
1903
for Liberty & Co., silver-mounted glass, stamped assay marks for Birmingham, 1903 and 'CYMRIC 2065', James Powell & Sons glass liner, together with a leather case printed twice 'LIBERTY'
height 11 3/4in (29.5cm); width 4 1/4in (10.5cm); depth 5 3/4in (14.5cm)
Footnotes:
Provenance
John Less (1936-2019), London
Private Collection, Pennsylvania (acquired from the above, 1998)

Archibald Knox (1864-1933) was the creative genius who shaped the Celtic Revival in the United Kingdom. Born on the Isle of Man, an ancient Celtic outpost in the middle of the Irish Sea, he was a principal designer for Liberty & Co of London from the late 1890s through 1908. Knox's nearly two thousand designs in various decorative media including silver and pewter, jewelry, and garden ware made Liberty & Co the emporium to patronize for the most trend setting interior furnishings of the day. Knox's aesthetic is characterized by the sensuality of Celtic ornamentation transformed by an abstract or modernist sensibility; the results are objects of compelling mystery and beauty.

This decanter from 1903 is Knox at his best. He adapts the Celtic knot to create a lyrical silver armature that embraces its glass body. The design also demonstrates Knox's extraordinary ability to marry the positive space of the silver with the tinted negative space of the green glass. Of the dozen or so jug and decanter designs in silver and pewter, this model, Number 2065 in the Liberty Sketchbook and quite possibly the prototype for the design itself, is a superlative example of Knox's ability to blend form and function.

This decanter is illustrated on page 188 of Archibald Knox, the standard edition of Knox's work, edited by Dr. Stephen Martin, and published by Art Media Press in 2001. It will also be illustrated in the second and significantly expanded edition of this work entitled Knox, to be published by Art Media Press in late 2022 or early 2023.

Dr. Stephen A. Martin