Silver Studio - The Silver Studio's International Influence

The Silver Studio's International Influence

The importance of the Silver Studio’s influence internationally is indicated by the fact that in the early 1900s, around two thirds of the Studio’s designs were sold to French and Belgian textile manufacturers, including Bergert Dupont et Cie, Dumas, Florquin, Gros Roman, Zuber Cie, Vanoutryve, Parison and Leborgne. Continental manufacturers were thus able to gain immediate access to the popular “Style Anglais” by purchasing Silver Studio designs, and the work of the Silver Studio undoubtedly helped to enhance the reputation of British designers abroad. During the 1890s, Arthur Silver was also heavily interested in and influenced by the art of Japan. He worked closely with Alexander Rottman who imported many different varieties of paper from Japan. With Rottman, the Silver Studio developed a pioneering technique of stencil decoration, influenced by Japanese stencils, which in turn came to influence the Studio’s own Art Nouveau designs. Anglo-Japanese collaboration of this kind in the 1890s meant that Japanese influences were absorbed into British design and decoration, and equally that British tastes influenced the products of Japan itself.