Charles ffoulkes

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Charles ffoulkes, around 1917–1918
Allegory of Charles ffoulkes: British soldier as Saint George

Charles John ffoulkes (born June 26, 1868 in London , † April 22, 1947 in Oxford ) was a British artist , weapons historian and curator .

Live and act

ffoulkes received his education at Radley College and Shrewsbury School . In 1886 he enrolled at John's College , Oxford , but left without a degree in 1889. He then studied art in Paris . The painting he felt after some time as unsatisfactory and was dedicated to the arts and crafts movement , while drawing on metal processing specialist. It is possible that his friend William Morris made him aware of this art movement. In 1906 he opened a studio in Rome for a short time , where he returned to painting. In 1907 he returned to Oxford and resumed metalwork.

ffoulkes has been interested in the theater since his youth . He took part in history festivals and tried to represent weapons and armor as historically accurate as possible. He worked his way into the subject with great enthusiasm. He studied weapons and armor at the Pitt Rivers Museum and Ashmolean Museum . As a result, he became interested in the manufacture of armaments. For the Oxford Historical Society he worked as a publishing editor in the field of armaments and military . Ultimately, the previously unexplored topic manufacturing made of armor to Ffoulkes final thesis . This research brought ffoulkes into contact with Harold Dillon , then curator of the Royal Armories and an expert on weapons and armor.

ffoulkes' first publication appeared in 1909 as a general study of weapons and armor. In addition, he has published articles in the magazines The Connoisseur and The Burlington Magazine . In 1911 he wrote the introduction to the new edition of Louis de Gaya's book from the 17th century, followed in 1912 by a catalog on weapons and armor in the Oxford museums. Also in 1912 his main work on the craft of the armory was published .

In November 1912, Harold Dillon, who was planning his retirement , proposed ffoulkes as his successor. ffoulkes accepted and was appointed curator of the Royal Armories on January 1, 1913.

With the start of the First World War , ffoulkes became the duty officer of the air defense unit at Gresham College in London in August 1914 . His unit fired the first shots of an anti-aircraft unit in London on September 8, 1915. Due to the war experience, ffoulkes had valuable armaments of the Royal Armories relocated to the ground floor as air protection measures . In 1916, ffoulkes completed the Royal Armories' first modern inventory catalog. The catalog contains a description of the holdings and a history of the collection at its location in the Tower.

In 1917, William Martin Conway , Alfred Mond and ffoulkes encouraged the British government to set up a museum on the then raging war. ffoulkes was appointed curator of the forming Imperial War Museum and left the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve , where he served in the London air defense. He became an independent major in the Royal Marines so that he could work closely with the British armed forces without being part of the command structure. The Imperial War Museum opened in June 1920. ffoulkes ensured a broad orientation of the museum. In addition to the military equipment of the warring factions, the museum collected films, documents and works by official British war painters and war photographers . ffoulkes, he retired from the Imperial War Museum upon reaching retirement age in 1933 , but remained a trustee .

During his time as a curator at the Royal Armories, he continued to develop the museum. He set up the White Tower entirely for exhibition purposes, but the Broad Arrow Tower as a museum depot . He organized restorations , enlarged the collection and improved the lighting and exhibition of the exhibits and created a teaching collection of service weapons . He resigned from his work as a curator in the Royal Armories in 1938.

In his retirement, ffoulkes continued to publish, mainly in the Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research , where he focused on military weapons.

Honors

Because of his services in building the Imperial War Museum, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1925 at the "Officer" (OBE) level and in 1934 at the "Commander" level (CBE).

Works

  • 1909: Armor and Weapons , [2]
  • 1911: Introduction to Gaya's Traité Des Armes , original 1678 by Louis de Gaya [3]
  • 1912: European Arms and Armor in the University of Oxford (principally in the Ashmolean and Pitt-Rivers Museums)
  • 1912: The armourer and his craft, from the XIth to the XVIth century , [4]
  • 1913: Decorative ironwork from the XIth to the XVIIIth century
  • 1916: Inventory and Survey of the Armories of the Tower of London Volume 1 , Volume 2
  • 1930: The 'Dardanelles' Gun at the Tower .
  • 1932: European arms and armor
  • 1937: The gun-founders of England, with a list of English and continental gun-founders from the XIV to the XIX centuries
  • 1938: Sword, Lance and Bayonet: A Record Of The Arms Of The British Army And Navy
  • 1939: Arms and the Tower
  • 1945: Arms & armament: an historical survey of the weapons of the British army

Web links

Commons : Charles John Ffoulkes  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Major Charles John ffoulkes Lives of the first world war, Imperial War Museums
  2. ^ Key Players , Pitt Rivers Museum
  3. ^ Jan Piggott: Palace of the People: The Crystal Palace at Sydenham 1854-1936 , Verlag C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2004 ISBN 9781850657279 , p. 182 [1]
  4. a b c d Charles ffoulkes , Royal Armories
  5. Who set up the Imperial War Museums? , Imperial War Museum
  6. ^ Ffoulkes, Charles John , WorldCat