Peter Waals 1870-1937

Peter Waals was a Dutch cabinet maker associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. He was born in 1870 in The Hague, Holland, where he trained as a cabinet maker. He then spent three years working in Brussels, Berlin and Vienna before he moved to London in 1901. Here he met Ernest Grimson, who had set up small workshops in Cirencester and Sapperton, where he made furniture, turned chairs and metalwork. Waals was offered the position of foreman/manager and chief cabinet maker. He accepted and spent the rest of his life in the Cotswolds. The furniture and craft work produced at the workshop under Waals' supervision is regarded as a supreme achievement under the Arts and Crafts movement. Grimson died in 1919 leaving Waals in charge of the Daneway Workshops. The year after Waals set up his own workshop at Halliday's Mill, in nearby Chalford. The workshop produced quality pieces of furniture made to Waals' designs between 1920 and 1937. He offered five to six year apprenticeships, and one of his apprentices was New Age thinker Sir George Trevelyan. Waals was appointed as consultant in design at Loughborough College in 1935, a primary centre of training handicraft teachers in England at the time. As well as instructing students in high standards of craftsmanship established by Grimson, Waals also designed all the furniture for Hazlerigg Hall and many fittings throughout the college, all of which was built by his students. The college is now part of Loughborough University and the University Archives holds many of Waals' furniture design drawings. Waals died in 1937 and is buried in the churchyard at Chalford. Sadly his workshops were destroyed by a fire in 1938.