Born: 27 July 1871, United Kingdom
Died: 24 April 1962
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Lawrence William White. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Houston, Mary Galway (1871–p.1954), craftswoman, teacher, and author, was born 27 July 1871 at Coleraine Academical Institution, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry, daughter of Thomas Galway Houston, headmaster of the institution, and Maud Steen Houston (née Millar). She trained (1890–94) at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art (DMSA), winning numerous prizes during her final year. Her exhibits at the RDS (1894–6) and at the first exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland (1895) included drawings, leatherwork, repoussé metalwork, and designs for lace and crochet, thus adumbrating the versatile facility over a range of media that would be a hallmark of her career. Entering the Royal College of Art, South Kensington, London (1896), she exhibited regularly with the English Arts and Crafts Society and (from 1901) at the Royal Academy. A conspicuous entrant in the annual national competitions for schools of art conducted out of South Kensington – her submissions were frequently selected for illustration in art magazines – she was gold medallist in the 1898 competition for a widely praised modelled leather bookcover for the Kelmscott Chaucer. Acclaimed especially for her leatherwork, she exhibited (1898–1903) leather bookbindings (the subject of an article in the Magazine of Art, xxiii (1899–1900)), and embossed-and-modelled leather panels, demonstrating skill in both figure work and ornament. She published an article on the craft of embossed and chased leatherwork in the Art Workers’ Quarterly (1903), illustrated by her set of four relief panels depicting scenes from Homer. Her achievements in other media included needlework, and repoussé metalwork in silver, copper, and pure tin. She exhibited a gracefully designed art-nouveau silver mirror-back at the 1899 English Arts and Crafts Society exhibition. Her modelled designs for a three-piece toilet set in beaten silver were included in a representative selection of work from British art schools at the 1900 Paris exhibition.
While her predominant early style combined contemporary English and art nouveau, Houston turned (c.1900) to the Celtic style for work in various media, employing designs inspired by Irish myth and legend, and derived from ancient Celtic and medieval Irish prototypes. Commissioned by The Studio magazine to execute two silver cups – her first attempt at metalwork-in-the-round – for an article encouraging improved design of sporting cups and trophies (1900), she was inspired for one of the pieces by the Dunvegan cup, a celebrated three-handled ancient Irish mether. Based in London, she continued to exhibit at the RDS and at the annual summer exhibitions in Portrush, Co. Antrim, of the Belfast-based Irish Decorative Art Association. Her large silver-plated casket in the shape of an Irish bell shrine, decorated with panels of interlaced knotwork and bosses, and with circular medallions containing modelled heads, was shown at the 1902 Cork exhibition. She designed a tapestry panel of ‘A voyage to Tir-na-noge’ for the Dun Emer guild (1903), and executed a tooled leather cover, including four figured medallions, for a presentation album marking the retirement (1904) of DMSA headmaster James Brenan. She taught for many years (commencing 1903) at Camberwell School of Art, London. Developing her interest in costume design and the history of dress, she published A technical history of costume in three volumes: Ancient Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian costumes and decorations (1920; co-authored with Florence S. Hornblower); Ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine costume and decoration, including Cretan costume (1931); and Medieval costume in England and France: the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries (1939).
Houston’s career at the cusp of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries represented a prevailing trend within the arts-and-crafts movement away from earlier communal activity toward greater emphasis upon individuality in design and production, and the consequent emergence of the art-school-trained, professionally qualified, individual art-worker. Though she was recognised as one of the leading British-based craftworkers active in the period, her Irish origins were long neglected by retrospective art history. She rarely exhibited in her later years. She was still living in 1954, when she published a revised and retitled second edition of Ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Persian costume, and may have returned to reside in Ireland. The date and place of her death are uncertain.