Story
Jessie Marion King was an artist practising in Glasgow, Salford, Paris (as co-founder of the Shieling Atelier), Kirkcudbright, and Arran from the 1890s to 1949.
She worked across various media and crafts producing jewellery, decorated ceramics, and illustrations, especially for books. In the early 1900s, she taught bookbinding and ceramic decoration at the Glasgow School of Art.
A rich source of Jessie’s work can be found among the book covers of the Scottish publishers Gowans and Gray, and those of T. N. Foulis. Adam Luke Gowans, one of Gowans and Gray’s directors in the late 1800s, was appointed the head librarian at the Glasgow School of Art in 1944, and had a long-standing interest in collaborating with the Glasgow artists whose designs graced the covers of many of their books.
Jessie produced beautifully detailed illustrations including covers for Gowans’ playbooks The Death of Tintagiles (1909), Alladine and Palomides (1911), and The Intruder (1913), and other books, as well as her own works of illustrations: Dwellings of an Old World Town (1909), and Kirkcudbright, A Royal Burgh (1934).
The publisher T. N. Foulis marketed their books as crafted works of art in their own right (quality publisher’s bindings being relatively new in this period) and Jessie’s work certainly helped that vision become a reality.
Jessie worked for other publishers as well, including internationally, especially illustrating short stories. You can explore one of these here, a French version of Kipling's short story 'An Habitation Enforced'.
Jessie also designed jewellery for Liberty of London.
She also designed ceramics, such as this pot featuring the Selkirk grace (a popular grace in Scotland written here in a mixture of Scots and English) the design speaks to her later more colourful style.
Jessie's interdisciplinarity and ability to work in mixed media was typical of the ‘Glasgow style’, an art and design movement so-called due to its association with the Glasgow School of Art.
It was a holistic ‘total design’ movement encompassing many disciplines. It built upon the earlier Arts and Crafts, belonging to the contemporary Art Nouveau and Jugendstil, and was an influence upon the art movements yet to come, such as Art Deco, Dutch de Stijl, and Bauhaus.
The artists most commonly associated with the style were the Glasgow Four: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, his wife Margaret MacDonald, her sister Frances MacDonald and Frances' husband James Hebert McNair. Often these artists produced work together.
Many other designers worked in the same circle, a number of them were women. The female artists make up the 'Glasgow girls', though ladies might be a more appropriate term - some of the group, Jessie included, formed a society called the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists. However, the name the 'Glasgow girls' was coined in response to the 'Glasgow boys', a group of celebrated male Scottish modernist painters working in an overlapping period who received somewhat more scholarly attention in subsequent years than the ladies working predominantly in craft and design.
The success of the Glasgow style was thanks in no small part to the director of the Glasgow School of Art Francis (Fra) Henry Newbery who encouraged practising artists to teach at the school. His own wife, Jessi Newbery was one of the 'Glasgow Girls'.
Fra Newbery was particularly good at bringing promising students together in collaborations, not just the Glasgow Four but also Jessie, her friend Helen Paxton Brown, and her designer husband E.A. Taylor, with whom she later lived in this house in Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway. Kirkcudbright was the centre of a vibrant artists community and a community of practising female artists (Greengate close coterie) of which Jessie was the central figure.
Jessie contributed internationally to the popularity of the 'Scottish School' of Art Nouveau winning the Turin gold medal for her book design in 1901. The certificate called her Mr (Signor) Jessie King as there was no precedent for a woman to be awarded such an honour.
The story of Jessie M. King is one of collaboration with peers, especially other female artists, and is closely linked to the successes of the 'Scottish school' of designers in the Art Nouveau movement. It is, however, also a story where Jessie is recognised as an internationally renowned artist and pioneer in her own right.
Further reading:
The covers of Gowans and Gray playbooks and other items in the University of Edinburgh’s Collections
Green Gate house and material held by the University of Glasgow Special Collections
The First International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art in Turin 1902
Article on Jessie’s Turin award in The Scotsman, 28 July 1999