The London Museum today announced that it will be putting on a display that will focus on the work of Lockwood Kipling, which will open to the public in January 2017.
Running from the 14th January until the 2nd April, the exhibition will be the first to explore the life and work of Lockwood Kipling an influential figure in the Arts and Crafts movement.
Created in collaboration with the Bard Graduate Center, New York the display will explore the V&A’s collections through the artist’s life and career, which included illustrating his son Rudyard Kipling’s books.
The exhibition will reveal how the work of Lockwood Kipling helped to play an important role in shaping the foundation collection for the museum and will include items which he saw at the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851, showcasing Indian craftsmanship, pieces relating the Arts and Crafts movement as well as collaborations between Rudyard Kipling and his father.
Highlights of the exhibition will include paintings of the Indian section of the Great Exhibition, Lockwood Kipling’s own sketches of Indian craftspeople observed during his time living in India, objects he selected in India for the V&A, designs and illustrations for books, and furniture designed for royal residences Bagshot Park and Osborne.
Lockwood Kipling began his career as a designer and sculptor, influenced at a young age by a visit to the 1851 Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace where he saw Indian objects that were later purchased as part of the founding collections of the V&A. He later then joined the South Kensington Museum (as the V&A was then known) producing decoration for the new V&A buildings with terracotta architectural sculpture under the direction of Godfrey Sykes.
He then left London in 1865 to head to India and spending ten years in in Bombay (now known as Mumbai) to teach at the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art, then moving to Lahore, the capital of the Punjab, as Principal of the new Mayo School of Art (today Pakistan’s National College of Arts) and curator of the adjoining museum. In 1893, he moved back to England to collaborate more with his son.
Lockwood Kipling: Arts and Crafts in the Punjab and London will be on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum from the 14th January until the 2nd April 2o17.