Illustration: Leon Victor Solon. Allegorical Figures textile design, c1893.
Leon Albert Victor Solon was born in England in 1872. His Father was a French emigre designer who had worked for the prestigious French ceramic company of Sevres. In England he held an important position within the influential English ceramic company of Minton which had come to dominate much of the nineteenth century interior interest in ceramics. Leon Victor followed his fathers' footsteps, after studying at the Kensington School of Art, and became a designer for Minton's during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century. He later emigrated to the United States.
Although mostly known for his ceramic work, Solon did produce decorative work in a number of disciplines including textiles. It is unknown to what extent his textile work was commercially produced. The textile design shown in this article which was called Allegorical Figures and was produced in about 1893, is said either to be the only textile design produced by Solon, or at least the only remaining documented piece. That the design had some value in its own right is shown by the fact that it was printed by Wardle & Co, the prestigious textile printing company that had had such a close relationship with William Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement.
This printed design, which could be bought on both silk and velvet, is an extraordinary piece of work, particularly for an English design. Solon was a keen purveyor of the general European Art Nouveau movement and was an important contributor to the style when he worked at Minton's. However, he was much more specific in his tastes and championed the Austrian version of the movement, popularly known as the Secession. Although this design was produced a couple of years before Solon was first employed by Minton, it does go to show that his ideas regarding contemporary decoration were somewhat more adventurous than many of his English contemporaries, and certainly more Eurocentric.
Interestingly Minton, although already employing Solon's father as a key component of their design workforce, hired Leon Victor after the recommendation of The Studio magazine, a vehicle that was often used to propel young designers into the limelight, at least as far as the industry and retail trade were concerned. It was an article concerning Solon's decorative work that gave Minton the impetus to hire Solon. This particular design could well have been included within the article.
Solon was to prove a wise investment for Minton. By the turn of the twentieth century Solon was in charge of Minton's contemporary design department, which introduced Art Nouveau styling across a number of the company's range of ceramics from tile designs to vases and plaques. They proved extremely popular with the British public and did much to popularise the movement in Britain.
Solon himself was a keen purveyor of classical themes which he often tied into the Art Nouveau styling of elongated figures, foliage and nudes. However, although there were elements of individual interest and exploration within Solon's work, at the heart of his style at least during the Art Nouveau period was his obvious admiration and indebtedness to Central European contemporary styling. The ceramic work he produced for Minton was much closer to the Germanic interpretation of Art Nouveau than it was of either the French or Belgian. To some extent this can be seen in this particularly early design piece by Solon. The textile design contains features that would not look amiss in either the early German Jugend or Austrian Secessionist forms that were to become such highly popular and alternative versions of Art Nouveau.
It is hard to say how Solon's textile work would have developed if he had produced more. It seems likely that the work would have remained representative as did his later work in a number of different genres when he moved to the United States. It always retained a classical dimension and it is unlikely that Solon would have moved into abstract and repetitive pattern work, as did much of central European textile design over the coming decades. As stated, Solon was not a trained textile designer but had a firm background in ceramics. It is perhaps lucky that we have any examples of this complex and unusual textile design. One piece seems to have survived and can luckily be viewed online. To see this colour version of Allegorical Figures, follow the link to The Metropolitan Museum of Art which owns a printed silk version of the design. The link can be found in the Reference links section below.
Reference links:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
English Decorative Ceramics: Art Nouveau to Art Deco (1880-1940)
Art Nouveau Tiles: C. 1890-1914 (A Schiffer Book for Collectors)
Art Nouveau Tiles (Shire Library)
Art Nouveau Tiles + CD Rom
Art Nouveau, Art Deco And The Thirties: The Ceramic, Glass & Metalwork Collections at Brighton Museum --1986 publication.
Turn-of-the-Century Tile Designs in Full Color (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)
Art Nouveau: Utopia: Reconciling the Irreconcilable (Taschen's 25th Anniversary Special Editions Series)
Art Nouveau
422 Art Nouveau Designs and Motifs in Full Color (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)
Art Nouveau Designs (Design Source Books)
Art Nouveau: An Anthology of Design and Illustration from "The Studio" (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)
Modern Style: Jugendstil/Art Nouveau 1899-1905
