Daniel Cottier

This book follows the phenomenal rise of Daniel Cottier (1838–91) from an apprentice coach painter in Glasgow to the founder of Cottier & Co., a fine and decorative arts business with branches on three continents. This gifted designer and brilliant art entrepreneur keenly spotted one of the key aspects of late 19th-century bourgeois culture—its focus on family, home, and church—and seized the artistic and commercial opportunities of the building and decorating boom that it brought about. Cottier was a proponent of Aestheticism, an international trend in the history of culture, art, and design from about 1860 to 1900: he understood the era’s desire for beauty and realized the economic possibilities of its commoditization. Beyond biography, therefore, this book illuminates a significant event of late 19th-century cultural history— Aestheticism’s cult of beauty meeting with the bourgeoisie’s financial ability to possess it.