John Starkie Gardner
John Starkie Gardner (1845-1930) was born in Bayswater, London, the son of Cicely Starkie and John Edmund Gardner, a successful manufacturer of chandeliers and lamps. John lived with his affluent parents into his mid twenties, focusing on the advanced study of botany and geology—subjects on which he would also publish books. By 1878 Starkie Gardner had thrown himself into his new vocation of architectural ironwork, having executed a sophisticated and handsome pair of gates for the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers at their Hall on St. Helen’s Place, London. By 1882 he had established premises at 29 Albert Embankment, Lambeth, London.
In 1884, Gardner married Caroline Cubitt, a 33-year-old widow, and the daughter of architect Edwin Ward. The couple jointly ran Starkie Gardner and Company. Gardner began his association with the South Kensington Museum around this time, completing the Exhibition road gate in 1885 and numerous copies of masterworks for the collection including a replica of the Eleanor Grille in 1888 (the original made by Thomas de Leghton in 1294). Ironwork Volumes I & II were published by the South Kensington Museum in 1892 and 1896 respectively. In 1896 Gardner wrote a biography of Jean Tijou, accompanying a bicentennial reprinting of the master’s A New Booke of Drawings, establishing Gardner as an authority on the subject.
Two years later, in 1898, Gardner published Armor in England, another standard text on a related subject. His magnum opus was undoubtedly the 320 page tome, English Ironwork of the 17th & 18th Century. Published in 1911, it presumably took the better part of a decade to write. It was also a turbulent decade for Gardner. His wife, Caroline, petitioned for divorce and dissolved their partnership in 1900 when she found evidence of his infidelity. Gardner formed a new partnership with Lewis Boswell Inman Hamilton, and fortunes looked promising as the firm held a royal warrant as metalworkers to King Edward VII. But this success would be short lived—by 1912 Gardner had declared bankruptcy and dissolved the new partnership.
In 1914, Gardner married his longtime mistress, Alice Dring. He continued with ornamental ironwork, his second wife now running the company in partnership with Oswald Hasting Jaques. In 1920 the firm completed their most high profile commission, the Scottish National Memorial to King Edward VII entry gates and railings at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, Scotland. Gardner’s second wife died in 1924, and Gardner himself passed in 1930. The firm continued on into the 1970s, though after World War II they had evolved into an engineering firm.
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Biography by Gabriel Craig. July 2025. An article about the writing and metalwork of John Starkie Gardner appears in the Fall 2025 issue of "The Anvil's Ring", published by the Artist Blacksmith Association of North America.
Additional credit to Terry Cavanaugh and Two Temple Place for writings which were referenced in the writing of the above biography.
