John Edward Crawford

Born 1897
Died 1982

Active: 1911 - 1969

Country of birth and death: England

Wood carver, stone carver, sculptor, desginer, stained glass artist and teacher

Born in Marylebone, London. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to John H M Bonnor (1875-1917). Bonnor was a versatile London-based Arts & Crafts practitioner: a stained glass artist, sculptor in wood and stone, metalworker, and designer of jewellery. Crawford won second and first prize, in 1914 and 1915 respectively, in modelling – for three-dimensional objects for casting – at the prestigious annual competition of the Goldsmiths', Silversmiths' and Jewellers' Art Council. He was photographed at Aldershot in the Queen’s Own West Kent Regiment (infantry) in 1916.

From 1920 until 1927 Crawford worked on a freelance basis for the stained glass partnership Lowndes & Drury: this included designs for the re-setting of medieval glass at the west end of Salisbury Cathedral. It appears that Crawford met Martin Travers (1886-1948) at the Glass House premises of Lowndes & Drury. Travers rented a studio at the Glass House from 1919 until 1926; he was appointed chief instructor in stained glass at the Royal College of Art in 1925. John Crawford appears in the earliest surviving prospectus of the Royal College of Art, 1926-1927, as the technical instructor in stained glass, a position he continued to hold until 1959.

From 1924 Crawford was Travers’ sculptor and chief assistant in all areas of work. With the increase in demand after the war in 1946 Travers took on Lawrence Lee as a full-time assistant in glass while Crawford, aided by Travers’ veteran decorator Alf Noe, concentrated on furnishings.

John Crawford’s contribution at the Travers studios was more than that of a multi-talented craftsman and technical assistant – he was also entrusted to produce designs. On the reverse of a photograph of a stone memorial tablet for Douglas Walter Drewett, in St Peter & St Paul, Mitcham – the faculty for which was issued in 1928 – Crawford wrote ‘my first piece of work for Mr Travers’. The much-admired painted plaster stations of the cross at St Augustine’s, Queen’s Gate, Kensington (c.1928) – long assumed to have been designed by Travers himself – were, in fact, by John Crawford.

More typically, however, Crawford’s art was employed in the implementation (after preparing full-size working drawings) of Martin Travers’ sketches in sculpture and furnishings, and – as principally with J E Nuttgens before him and later Lawrence Lee – stained glass (for which designs were enlarged to full-size photographically).

Following Martin Travers’ death John Crawford and Lawrence Lee separately finished the outstanding commissions, with Crawford taking the furnishings and a share of the windows. At St Mary’s, Aldermary, in the City of London, Lee and Crawford produced a comprehensive scheme of new glass with Lee completing the great east window to Travers’ outline sketches, and Crawford designing the equally large Travers-style west window.

From 1947 John Crawford produced designs for furnishings on behalf of Faith Craft, notably for St George’s, Headstone, Harrow. He maintained a freelance relationship with Faith Craft for a number of years and engaged the firm in the completion of Travers’ projects as well as his own.

From 1957 until 1969 he cutlined and painted windows for stained glass artist D Marion Grant. From 1958 until 1967 he made drawings of church and cathedral interiors for David Nye – architect to the Diocese of Southwark and architect and surveyor to Guildford Cathedral – who gave him numerous other commissions. Crawford’s designs for embroidery, produced at the convent of the Community of St John the Baptist, Clewer, Windsor, included a frontal for St George’s Chapel (1962) and hoods for the Dean and Canons (1958).

John Crawford’s membership of the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, in his capacity as a wood and stone carver, probably post-dated Travers’ death. He was elected a Fellow of the British Society of Master Glass Painters in 1961. He continued Travers’ practice of having his windows cut, fired, glazed and fixed by Lowndes & Drury, who, in turn, engaged him to design several windows for the firm in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1965 his article on ‘The Travers School of Glass’ was published in The Journal of Stained Glass.

This biographical note was written by Stephen Keeble.

Citing this record

'John Edward Crawford', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib2_1210254025, accessed 30 Sep 2023]

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