Architectural sculptor, working in a range of materials, including wood, stone, terracotta and plaster. He was born in Highgate, north London, into a family of Huguenot descent, one of the six children of Henry Collingwood Aumonier, a jeweller, and his wife, Nancy. (James, the eldest child [1832–1911], would go on to be a successful landscape painter.) Following her husband’s death in 1848, Nancy Aumonier and her six children moved in with her brother, William Stacy, also a jeweller. According to Mapping Sculpture, William Aumonier served an apprenticeship with Leonard William Collman’s architectural decorating partnership, Collman & Davis, before, in c.1858, aged 19, going to Paris to gain experience in a number of French workshops, including that of the architect Edmond Duthoit who, under the direction of Viollet-le-Duc, was working on the restoration of the Cathedral of Amiens. On his return to London, Aumonier worked again in Collman’s studio where he was in contact with Collman’s close friend, the sculptor and painter Alfred Stevens. In 1876, Aumonier established his own architectural sculpture workshop, at 1 New Inn Yard, Tottenham Court Road, evidently at the suggestion of the architect and interior designer John McKean Brydon, for whom he would carry out work on a number of buildings in Bath in the 1890s. Aumonier was elected a member of the Art Workers’ Guild in 1885 and was a regular exhibitor with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society from their inception in 1888, until 1906. He participated both with his own designs – a panel and a pilaster in carved oak in 1888, models and plaster carvings made for the Anaglypta Company in 1890 and a hall seat in carved oak in 1899 – and also as the executant of the designs of others, including William De Morgan’s adaptation of a Luca della Robbia panel in 1889; Charles Harrison Townsend’s plaster decorations for the apse of All Saints Church, Knightsbridge, in 1890; and C.F.A. Voysey’s model for a lamp-post in 1895. By 1890, Aumonier’s son, William Aumonier II (1869–1943), had joined the firm, which henceforth traded as William Aumonier & Son. The earliest known collaboration of father and son is the carving of a wooden litany desk, designed by Reginald Blomfield for Grantham Church, and included in the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society’s 1890 exhibition. Another collaborative work constituted the Aumoniers’ final appearance in the Society’s exhibitions, in 1906. Catalogued as ‘Model for stone carving at Bristol’, this was almost certainly an example of the work they had carried out for Charles Holden’s Bristol Central Library, completed in the previous year. Aumonier exhibited only twice at the Royal Academy, in 1889 and 1890, his first contribution being his design for one of the gables of Aston Webb and Ingress Bell’s Victoria Law Courts at Birmingham, selected by the Builder for illustration later in the year. Aumonier’s accompanying statement exemplifies the perfectionist approach which created such demand from the leading architects of the day: ‘The whole of the work was modelled in the open air on a gallery above the clay-pit at Mr. Edwards’ terra-cotta Works at Ruabon. This was done expressly that we might go continually 60 or 70 ft. below the work while it was in progress so as to judge what its effect would be when fixed in its proper position on the building.’ Other examples of Aumonier’s work include the decorative carving for: Basil Champneys’ Indian Institute (now Oxford Martin School), Oxford (1882–84); Harrison Townsend’s Bishopsgate Institute, City of London (1892–94); Charles Henman II’s Croydon town hall porch (1892–96); Henry T. Hare’s Municipal Buildings, Oxford (1893–97); E.W. Mountford’s Central Criminal Court (1900–07); and the carved tympanum over the former main entrance (now the east gate of the front quad) of Blomfield’s Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (1909–10).
Bibliography: British and Irish Furniture Makers Online (The Furniture History Society): ‘Aumonier, William & Son (1870–1923)’; The Builder, 21 December 1889, p. 442 (‘Sculpture – New Law Courts, Birmingham’); A Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts. A complete dictionary of contributors and their work from its foundation in 1769 to 1904 (8 vols, 1905–06), Vol I (Abbayne–Carrington), 1905, p. 80; F. Lloyd et al, Public Sculpture of Outer South and West London, Liverpool, 2011, pp. 18–19; Mapping Sculpture; R. McKenzie, Public Sculpture of Glasgow, Liverpool, 2002, pp. 252, 254; D. Merritt and F. Greenacre, with K. Eustace, Public Sculpture of Bristol, Liverpool, 2011, p. 75; G.T. Noszlopy, Public Sculpture of Birmingham (ed. J. Beach), Liverpool, 1998, pp. 49, 50.
Terry Cavanagh, January 2026