Joseph Strutt

Joseph Strutt (27 October 1749 – 16 October 1802) was an English engraver, artist, antiquary, and writer. He is today most significantly known as the earliest and "most important single figure in the investigation of the costume of the past", making him "an influential but totally neglected figure in the history of art in Britain", according to Sir Roy Strong.

Childhood

Strutt was born at Springfield Mill in Chelmsford, Essex, the youngest son of Thomas Strutt and his wife Elizabeth (daughter of John Ingold, miller, of Woodham Walter, near Maldon, Essex) – the mill belonged to his father, a wealthy miller. When he was little more than a year old, his father died, leaving his mother to bring up him and his brother John – the latter, a year or two older, went on to become a physician in Westminster, London. Strutt was educated at King Edward VI Grammar school, Chelmsford (where there is a house named after him), and at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to the engraver William Wynne Ryland.

Early career

In 1770, he became a student at the Royal Academy in London, and was awarded one of the first silver medals to be presented by the Academy; the following year he took one of the first gold medals. From 1771 he began to study in the reading-room of the British Museum, where he gathered the materials for most of his antiquarian works. His first book, The Regal and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of England, appeared in 1773. For this, the first work of its kind published in England, he drew and engraved from ancient manuscripts representations of kings, costumes, armour, seals, and other objects of interest.