The Ironwork of James Sellars, Architect

James Sellars was a major star among Glasgow’s great Victorian architects, bursting on the scene in 1870 – aged only 26 – with his designs for the Stewart Memorial Fountain in Kelvingrove Park. Sellars went on to produce some of the city’s finest churches, schools, recreational and commercial buildings until his premature death in 1888.

A superlative draughtsman renowned for his “fertile mind and facile pencil,” Sellars – like his friend, Alexander “Greek” Thomson – often decorated his buildings with ornamental cast iron from his own designs, produced by the famed Saracen foundry of Walter Macfarlane & Co. The pattern for the lamps flanking the Mitchell Theatre entrance was a particular favourite of both Sellars and Macfarlane, being used around Glasgow and beyond.

The evening’s talk will examine the surviving cast iron designs of James Sellars and explore the often misunderstood relationship between Glasgow’s architects and its major iron foundries.

THIS TALK IS PART OF A FREE LECTURE SERIES AND EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH PROGRAMME OFFERED IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE GLASGOW CITY HERITAGE TRUST AND THE ALEXANDER THOMSON SOCIETY.