Category:W.J. Bassett-Lowke: Difference between revisions

Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke, portrait [image info]

Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke (1877-1953) founded the Bassett-Lowke company, which produced and distributed a mixture of imported, imported-and-modified, and home-produced model railways, ships, outdoor railways and architectural models. W.J. Bassett-Lowke Ltd were the UK's main importer and supplier of German-made model railways in the UK during the period that German companies dominated the market.

His first name is sometimes listed in articles as "Wenman", and sometimes as his family nickname "Whynne" or "Whynn" but in official documents he seems to have preferred to be known as simply "W.J." .

Family background

Model gauge 0 boiler in transport, J.T. Lowke and Sons, made by Bassett-Lowke [image info]

Abraham Bassett founded a small engineering and boiler repairs company in Northampton in 1859, and after his first wife died, he married the widow Mrs Tom Lowke. Her son, Joseph Tom, worked with his stepfather and eventually took over the business, which became J.T Lowke & Sons. His son Wenman Joseph was not all that keen to join the family business, and experimented with the idea of being an architect before realising that most of an architect's work was fairly mundane, and that most architects didn't get to build world-changing buildings.

Model engineering seemed to combine the opportunity to explore ambitious architectural and engineering projects in miniature while also letting him draw on the experience he'd gained from the family business, and there didn't seem to be much competition, so with the help of his father (who was probably quite pleased that WJ had found something to do that didn't stray too far from his own interests), W.J. set up Bassett-Lowke.

The Bassett-Lowke company, ~1898-

W.J. Bassett-Lowke's eponymous company was set up in around 1898, supplying hard-to-find model railway engineering parts by mail order. W.J.'s friendship with some of the most significant individuals in the model railway and model engineering communities, and his Northampton family' engineering connections stood him in good stead, and Bassett-Lowke's company began selling a range of steam engines, model locomotives and rolling stock, garden railways and model ships that were usually built by outside companies as contractors. stock was initially often built in Germany and finished in the UK, but with the outbreak of hostilities in WW1, became increasingly produced in the UK. His friendship with accomplished small-gauge model railway engineer Henry Greenly led to B-L's catalogues carrying a significant range of garden railway blueprints, parts and full locomotives, Greenly in turn had links with Stuart Turner (whose products also appeared in the B-L catalogues). George Winteringham's Northampton-based company did much of B-L's local manufacturing and local modification of imported items, and E.W. Twining moved to Northampton to supply B-L after his own aircraft and model aircraft business proved not to be wildly successful.

W.J's interests in steam locomotives (due to his family boiler-making background), architecture and ships seemed to dominate the company's output. W.J. wrote a book on the history of ships, and sometimes his company's promotional material seemed to go to great lengths to emphasise how far the company would go to support fellow "ship-lovers". W.J. seemed to be rather less interested in road transport or aircraft, and his company's almost complete lack of any road or aircraft models is notable, especially since the company's contractors showed themselves to be quite capable of producing exhibition-grade model cars, and given that the founder of Twining Ltd. was an expert in aircraft and model aircraft design.

W.J.'s ability to keep on amiable terms with a number of manufacturers who might normally have been expected to see themselves as rivals of his company seems to have helped the company no end. Part of this was probably due to due to the very limited nature of B-L's own manufacturing capabilities - the company was usually not competing directly with most of its suppliers, and if it got a manufacturing contract this would usually be subcontracted to part of the B-L "extended family". While there seems to have been some occasional exasperation from those manufacturers about the B-L company agreeing to contracts, prices and timescales without really understanding what was involved, many of the subcontractors were also probably grateful not to have to go to business meetings with clients, get involved with advertising, or worry about retail outlets.

Professional relationships

W.J.'s "enlightened" approach to business and to investing in personal relationships also paid off in other ways - when he helped Stefan Bing migrate to the UK out of Nazi Germany, this ended up giving Bassett-Lowke's company the Trix 00-gauge range of model railways, which (due to the miniaturised electrical engineering) would have been difficult or impossible for the company to produce using their UK contractors, without a very significant investment in R&D. When Henry Greenly agreed to stand in for W.J. on an early fact-finding tour of European toy manufacturers, Greenly ended up travelling first class and staying at the best hotels, an experience that probably earned Greenly's loyalty for life!

Publisher and author

Model Railways and Locomotives magazine, cover, December 1910 [image info]

Model Railways (revised edition), by W.J. Bassett-Lowke [image info]

As an enthusiast, W.J. also subscribed to the idea that it was important to put resources back into the modelling community, co-founding Model Railways and Locomotives magazine in 1909 with Henry Greenly, and writing a number of articles for various magazines, including MRaL and Meccano Magazine. He also wrote a small number of illustrated children's books on ships and boats, locomotives and trains, and modelmaking.

As an early foray into multimedia, the Bassett-Lowke company also offered the loan of a slideshow lecture (with slides and a script) on models and modelmaking.

Art and architecture

His interest in arts and design, coupled with his realisation after visiting Germany that the German design culture was much more established than Britain's, led him to take a number of steps towards encouraging a similar attitude in the UK. The B-L company catalogues sometimes showed an almost extravagant use of Art Nouveau lettering and design, usually produced by Ernest Twining, whose background had been in stained glass design, and who then wrote a book on commercial design listing some of his work for B-L. W.J also commissioned German architect Peter Behrens to build him a house.

W.J. also joined the fledgeling Design and Industries Association (after seeing the success of similar industry associations in Germany).

78 Derngate

In 1916 Bassett-Lowke commissioned the acclaimed designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh to redesign the interior of his house at 78 Derngate, Northampton, with Twining producing the stained glass. This turned out to be Mackintosh's last interior design project of this type, and 78 Derngate is now preserved and open to the public as a gallery.

Some furniture from the house is also on display at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, about ten minute's walk from the Toy Museum. Part of Mackintosh's design brief was to incorporate some of the new plastics that Bassett-Lowke was interested in though his work, so the "Brighton" pieces are historically notable for their innovative use of plastic as an inlay material for its blue panels. Unfortunately, the colour of these plastic panels hasn't aged very well.

Personal politics

W.J. was a great believer in progressive politics, which has led some commentators to point out a possible inconsistency of a champion of the left-wing making so much of his money from servicing the whims of the very rich (most of the population wouldn't have been able to afford a "gauge 0" train set, let alone a ride-on Garden Railway or the Maharajah's famous solid sterling silver dining-table train set). W.J. did however manage to infiltrate a small level of subversion into the B-L range in the shape of a set of "personality" passenger figures that represented people that he particularly respected, including Charlie Chaplin and George Bernard Shaw (who stayed at 78 Derngate at least once).