The achievements of designer and architect George Walton (1867–1933) have too often been eclipsed by his contemporary Charles Rennie Mackintosh. From a gifted artistic family, Walton not only established a flourishing business in Glasgow, but went on to develop a successful career in London, carrying out a wide variety of commissions for private and corporate clients. Most notably, Walton designed a series of remarkable showrooms for Kodak around Europe and two substantial, but very different houses for his great patron, Kodak’s managing director, the photographer George Davison. This talk will explore aspects of Walton’s life and career to establish his great versatility and invention as Glasgow’s ‘other’ designer. Daniel Robbins is Senior Curator, Museums with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and is responsible for two of London’s most significant house museums: Leighton House and Sambourne House. Formerly with Glasgow Museums, he curated the first exhibition devoted to the work of George Walton at Kelvingrove in 1993. He has organised many exhibitions and contributed to numerous catalogues and publications around nineteenth-century art, architecture and design, including the authorship of the companion guide to Leighton House. He was responsible for leading the award-winning project to restore the historic interiors of the house completed between 2008 and 2010 and for the subsequent £9.6 million refurbishment of two unsympathetic twentieth-century additions made to the museum. Completed in October 2022, the house reopened to great acclaim and was a finalist for the Art Fund Museum of the Year Prize in 2023. Daniel became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 2025.

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