Daniel Cottier
Cottier subsequently worked for the stainer James Ballantine in Edinburgh, and attended evening classes at the Trustees' Academy, at which 'Ornamental Design' was taught.
Cottier could not have been closer to the Pre-Raphaelites or to the stirrings of the Aesthetic Movement: in 1861 William Morris (1834–96) opened his decorating and furnishing partnership across from the College, at 8 Red Lion Square.
This may have exposed Cottier to the colour theories being developed by Morris, whose subtle and resonant tertiary hues were beginning to replace the archaeologically inspired mid-century primaries favoured by designers such as Thomson.
In 1862, Cottier returned to Scotland to accept an appointment as manager of Field & Allan, a firm of slaters, glaziers and decorators based in Edinburgh and Leith (1797–1910).
[1] Cottier persuaded Andrew Wells (1845–1915), his talented young assistant at Field & Allan, to join the new venture, together with Stephen Adam (1848–1910) from Ballantine & Co, and Charles Gow (1830–1891).
Encouraged by his growing success, in 1869 he moved the centre of his activities to London where, at 2 Langham Place, in partnership with Brydon, Wallace and John Bennett, he established 'Cottier and Company', which advertised as 'art furniture makers, mural decorators, and glass and tile painters'.
Certainly, the figures on a window such as the Musician Angels at St Machar's Cathedral, Aberdeen (1873), assume the strong contraposto poses which often appear in Maris's drawings.
In New York, Boston and elsewhere, Cottier & Co supplied ecclesiastical and domestic stained glass imported from the London workshop, which came to employ over a hundred men.
He also supplied a variety of other goods, from gasoliers to Oriental Carpetings, as well as decorating interiors and dealing in pictures and antiques, and Cottier's taste in Aesthetic furnishings and modern paintings spread across the States as far as Portland, Oregon.
An important window made in about 1877 for the main hall of the Newport, Rhode Island, house of William Sherman (1843–1912), formerly attributed to La Farge, is now considered to be the work of Cottier.
Cottier's transatlantic experiences may have crossed over into his Scottish commissions, such as the Baptism of Christ in Paisley Abbey, Renfreshire (c. 1880) which features an unusually bold exercise in depicting water-reeds blowing in the wind which seems to anticipate the landscape glass that Tiffany later developed in America.
In 1873, Cottier began to export the Aesthetic Movement to Australia with the opening of a branch in Sydney in partnership with John Lamb Lyon (1835–1916), a fellow Scot with whom he had trained in Glasgow and London.
He began to amass a large private collection of paintings, apparently to supply a legacy for his family, as his recurrent rheumatic fever made him ineligible for life insurance.
His architect, Archibald Dunn, presumably would have been impressed by the fact that Cottier had recently won a prize for the superb harmony of colours in his armorial window at the 1867 Paris International Exhibition.
This means that the Cottier windows have been moved twice from their original site, and this would explain the necessity for so much extra remedial lead-work within some of the panes of glass, presumably repairing damage caused by two removals and two re-installations.
The small windows at Prudhoe Hall depicting idyllic naturalistic scenes of a rising sun over a river are especially beautiful and seem to have a strong similarity to the work of Louis Comfort Tiffany.
There are several Cottier stained glass windows and a decorative interior scheme situated in Glasgow's West End which are cared for by Four Acres Charitable Trust (FACT).
The former Dowanhill Church, built in 1865 by William Leiper (1839-1916) and is an internationally important Category ‘A’ listed building due to its decorative scheme designed by Cottier.
