The Wilson Art Gallery and Museum

In 1886 the 22-year-old Gimson was on a holiday visiting sites in the south of England. He was working at J D Sedding’s architectural practice at the time. He visited Winchester cathedral and made lots of sketches of the wood- and stonework in the cathedral. In the Lady Chapel, he found a carving on a bench end in the choir stalls of a squirrel eating acorns, and sketched it. He also sketched some other whimsical animals there – they seem to have tickled his sense of humour.

Find out more about this sketchbook.

Gimson moved to Pinbury Park, near Sapperton, Cirencester, in 1894. He and his friends were to repair and restore the old house for the owner, Lord Bathurst, for a reduced rent. In 1903, after he’d moved to Sapperton and Lord Bathurst and his wife had taken over the manor house, Gimson designed a new room for the house, a library. He used squirrels on the fireplace. He seems to have particularly associated squirrels with Pinbury.

Find out more about Gimson’s architectural designs.

The first sketch for the fire dogs dates from when Gimson was setting up his blacksmith’s shop with the son of the nearby Water Lane blacksmith, Alfred Bucknell. Gimson had a big commission for metalwork in Scotland, at the Old Place at Mochrum in 1904. His friend, the architect Robert Weir Schultz, was making improvements to the house. On one side of the drawing is a thistle. Gimson designed thistle-headed fire dogs and other metalwork for the Old Place, but was clearly thinking about the squirrel in his sketchbook, too!

Find out more about Gimson’s metalworks. design

Not everything Gimson made a design for was made. We don’t have the design for the squirrel fire dogs, but we do have this alternative design with two roundels on each upright, and a pattern of oak leaves on the stem. It’s similar to the thistle fire dogs he designed for Mochrum. The design that was made in the end is much simpler. Perhaps Gimson felt this design was more successful, or maybe it was more cost effective to make them this way!

Find out more about Gimson’s metalwork designs.

This drawing would have been used in the blacksmith’s shop to transfer the design onto the metal. You can see it has been folded over, and, if you look very carefully, you can see the small holes where the metalworker has pricked out the design using. After cutting or piercing the holes in the design, a chisel is used to cut grooves into the metal to create the pattern. Then, the whole thing is given depth by beating out the back of the roundel.

Find out more about Gimson’s metalwork designs.