John Ednie

John Ednie was the eldest son of George Ednie a railway engine fitter & his mother Jane. He was born in Glasgow but grew up & went to school in Edinburgh until he enrolled at the Heriot Watt College. He won a scholarship to study English Architecture & Interior Decoration in 1897 & he travelled around the country studying these 2 subjects, he also travelled Europe & on his return he gained an apprenticeship with Scott Morton Decorators in Edinburgh & also worked with the architect John Kinross & at this time shared a home with his younger brother Andrew. He then joined Wylie & Lochhead in the design department along side George Logan & E.A.Taylor whom was head of design. Of the three designers Ednie was the purest Glasgow designer for 2 main reasons the first no doubt due to his Architectural studies & secondly because his designs were influenced by Ballie Scott but more importantly by Mackintosh & his designs in many circumstances very similar to Mackintosh's & therefore they are a much purer Glasgow Style. He particularly liked Cyma Recta cornices, shallow carving & squares & chequer details on furniture very much like Mackintosh which Taylor & Logan usually avoided. He designed the dining room in the Wylie & Lochhead Pavilion at The International Exhibition of 1901 which also went to Budapest in 1902 & water colour designs for 2 rooms by him were Exhibited in Turin in 1902. In 1903 he married Lily Epton in Edinburgh. The same year he lectured on furniture design until 1906 at the Heriot Watt college were he originally started his studies in Architecture & Interior Design. Also in 1906 he started designing free lance to I believe Wylie & Lochhead & certainly produced a lot of Interior decoration work for private clients & he also designed furniture for Garvie & Sons of Aberdeen & stain glass & decoration schemes for McCulloch & Co. Ednie also started full time work as the director of the Industrial Art Section of The Glasgow & West of Scotland Technical College & in 1908 he became Head of Design. He was a member of The Edinburgh Architectural Association & The Scottish Guild of Handicraft. He & John Taylor wrote a book called New Ideas for Home Decoration, for the USA. It seem the height of his career & when he was widely known for his work was around 1910. He decorated many house interiors, retail outlet restaurants,cinemas & public buildings throughout his career. He moved to London with his wife in 1926 & moved again to Cairo in 1928 where he became director of The Cairo School of Applied Art. He died from an animal bite in Cairo in 1934. Return to designers Return to Index


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