H. Blairman & Sons Ltd

Designed and manufactured by Donald McKay Stoddart (1876-1930)

Repoussé pewter, with stained pine and mirror glass

81.5 x 55 cm

Scottish (Glasgow), circa 1900

‘DMS’ (initialled, bottom front corner, proper left); printed Hunterian Art Gallery loan label, with ‘George Smith Collection’ added by hand – see right; hand-written note with brief biographical details about the artist – see right; ‘Clark’ and ‘107’ vendor [?] and lot number, written in chalk

[…]; ‘Clark’ [?]; Edmiston’s, Glasgow, 25 April 1962, lot 107; George Smith (1907-97), Glasgow; […]; Don Magner, New York; and by descent

C.J. Allan (intro.), Mackintosh & Others aspects of the George Smith collection, Glasgow, 1988, no. 67

H. Blairman & Sons Ltd, Furniture and Works of Art (2019), n0. 14

‘Mackintosh & Others: aspects of the George Smith collection’, Hunterian Art Gallery, 8 June-8 October 1988, no. 67

Private collection

Stoddart was articled to the practice of John Honeyman (1831-1914) & John Keppie (1862-1945) in 1892/93, at the time when Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) was employed as a draughtsman.  During his apprenticeship, Stoddart attended the Glasgow School of Art, where he remained until 1899.  In early 1900, Stoddart became chief draughtsman to established Glasgow architect Alexander Nisbet Paterson (1862-1947), whose practice merged to become Campbell Douglas & Paterson in 1903.

According to The Studio, ‘The International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art at Turin. – The Scottish Section’, ‘[t]he only other noticeable piece of repoussé is a lead panel by D. McKay Stoddart’, (26,1902, p. 101); this work remains untraced. George Fuchs, ‘Mackintosh und die Schule von Glasgow in Turin’, Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration,X (April-September 1902), pp. 575-98 illustrates repoussé work by Herbert McNair and Margaret Macdonald, but nothing by Stoddart.