THE FERN BULLETIN 



VOL. VIII 



JANUARY, 1900 



NO. 1 



JOHN WILLIAMSON 



By Geo. E. Davenport. 



OHN WILLIAMSON was born in Abernathy, Scotland, 



about the year 1838, and came to this country about 1866, 



settling soon after in Louisville, Kentucky, where he estab- 

 lished himself in the business of woodcarving, to which he had 

 served an apprenticeship in Glascow. It is to be presumed that, 

 necessarily, in connection with designing and carving in wood, 

 he must have acquired at least some rudiments of that knowledge 

 of drawing which later on he turned to such good account in his 

 exquisite fern work, but he once told me that he had never re- 

 ceived any regular instruction and was practically self-taught. 



At the time his "Ferns of Kentucky" was published he was 

 engaged in carrying on a brass foundry, under the title of John 

 Williamson & Co., and perfecting himself in the knowledge of 

 working metals, which enabled him subsequently to give to the 

 world that wonderful combination of the practical and beautiful 

 in household decorative art seen in the remarkable output of the 

 Williamson Art Metal Works at the Southern Exhibition in 1883. 



Here was the turning point in his career, which, up to this 

 time, had been one long, hard struggle. But Williamson pos- 

 sessed wonderful perseverence and patience. A key to the 

 strength of his character may be found in one of his letters to me 

 at abc.it this time, wherein he wrote: " I work hard; I have no 

 use for a lazy man. If I fail in my efforts at first, I try again, 

 and keep trying until I do succeed." A near friend thus wrote of 

 him in an appreciative review of his life, written for the Cincin- 

 nati Commercial Gazette shortly after his death: " He worked 

 hard in a foundry by day * * * and studied books in a little 

 room over the foundry far into the night. He had a great deal of 

 confidence in himself. I watched with an admiring awe the dual 

 man, so hard-handed, working with his great apron on at his 

 trade, reading, drawing, worshipping at the woodland shrine of 

 beauty in those moments when the finer, fairer self came upper- 



