Louis Osman

Plans for workshops at Canon’s Ashby

Pen, ink and pencil

50 x 38 cm

Louis Osman (30 January 1914 – 11 April 1996) was an architect, artist, goldsmith, silversmith and medallist. Few people matched his creations as a goldsmith, and consequently he was chosen to make the crown for the Investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1968. Many of his other works are in public collections in the UK and worldwide.

After Hele’s school in Exeter he studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture – part of University College London – from 1931. Also attending the Slade, he left the Bartlett being awarded the top first, which brings with it the Donaldson Medal of the RIBA.

ollowing the war he was busy as an architect, works including for Westminster Abbey, and Lincoln, Exeterm, Ely and Lichfield Cathedrals. Staunton Harold Church in Ashby de la Zouch for the National Trust, and of course his own folly, the Grade I listed Elizabethan manor house, Canons Ashby in Northamptonshire – which was given to the National Trust in 1981 when Osman was not able to keep the tenancy any longer.

At Canons Ashby, the plans of which are shown here, he established a workshop and had a team of silversmiths and goldsmiths working for him. In 1974 he created the exhibition celebrated by this lavishly illustrated catalogue. His 1969 crown for the Investiture of the Prince of Wales was on display, together with many other items of his own creation, and also by other silversmiths such as Malcolm Green, Philip Noaks and Stephen Nunn, also acknowledging the work of Desmond Clenn-Murphy, Peter Musgrove and Christopher Philipson in his own works.

Condition: Very good, on tracing paper; five sheets