Forged by Design shines a spotlight on Gordon Russell’s metalwork – a strand of his practice often overshadowed by his reputation as a furniture designer. The exhibition is led by the Gordon Russell Design Museum’s recent acquisition of a rare brass Alms Dish from the early 1920s, stamped for Russell & Sons, Broadway. Chased with a band of foliage, the dish is a finely made and quietly powerful example of Russell’s early design language in metal.

The Alms Dish is significant not only for its rarity but because the museum holds relatively few examples of Russell’s metalwork – and none previously of this quality. Its acquisition allows the museum to tell a broader story about Russell as a designer working across materials, at a moment when the Russell Workshops were developing their own metal shop to produce fittings and objects to the standard he demanded.

Rooted in Broadway, just steps from where the Russell family ran the Lygon Arms, the dish speaks to the local networks of craft, workshop practice and Arts & Crafts ideals that shaped Russell’s early career. Set alongside examples of furniture and workshop production, Forged by Design reveals how metalwork was not peripheral to Russell’s vision, but integral to the way he thought about design, craftsmanship and everyday objects.