Biographies

Hamilton T. Smith () He was a founding member of the Design and Industries Association, as the following paragraphs from their pages indicate What is needed at the present time is the gathering together of all the several interests concerned with industrial production into a closer association; an association of manufacturers, designers, distributors, economists and critics. It is, therefore, proposed to found a DESIGN & INDUSTRIES ASSOCIATION which shall aim at closer contact between the branches of production and distribution and…. explain its aims and ideals…. to the public. We ought to obtain far greater results from our own originality and initiative than we have done in the past. We must learn to see the value of our own ideas before they are reflected back on us from the Continent. These words were printed in “A PROPOSAL FOR THE FOUNDATION OF THE DESIGN & INDUSTRIES ASSOCIATION”, distributed to businessmen who visited the special exhibition of German goods of successful design at the Goldsmith’s Hall in London in March 1915. It appeared under the names of an Acting Committee: Cecil C Brewer, Ambrose Heal, F Ernest Jackson, J H Mason, Harry H Peach, Hamilton T Smith and Harold Stabler. Two months later, in May 1915, at an inaugural public meeting at the Great Eastern Hotel with Lord Aberconway in the chair, the Design & Industries Association was established. The founding members of the DIA organized an exhibition in 1915. Years later, Hamilton T. Smith had this to say about it: ;We seven had gathered a small following of like-minded men and women, and, under the aegis of the Board of Trade, the whole strength of the embryo DIA proceeded to comb the shops of London, and to ransack their own homes, for well-designed German and Austrian goods. Harry Peach lent a number of exhibits including a collection of finely printed German books and pamphlets.’ This exhibition led to the founding of the DIA that year and they held their own exhibition of Design and Workmanship in Print in October of that year, featuring posters by , and , book illustrations and “Folio pages in simple type,” with books from the Curwen Press, the Westminster Press and the Baynard Press. Frank Brangwyn Fred Taylor Toulouse-Lautrec