William Christmas Codman

He then worked as a designer for abbeys and cathedrals, probably for Sir Gilbert Scott, in the Gothic Revival style.

His church designs included communion plate for the See of Liverpool and the Memorial Chapel in Delhi, India; candelabra for St. Paul's in London; and lighting fixtures for the Notre-Dame Cathedral, Luxembourg.

He subsequently worked for the Birmingham firm of Elkington & Co., and the London silversmithing company Cox and Son, then from 1884 to 1887 supervised the construction of furniture designed by the English painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema for Messrs. Johnstone, Norman & Company of London.

His most famous Gorham work, however, was Martelé, a line of Art Nouveau style furniture unveiled in 1900 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris.

In 1914, at age seventy-five, Codman retired from Gorham and returned to England, where he died in 1921 at his home in Woking, Surrey.