Dresser is generally recognized as having run the first "modern" design studio, with a number of assistants and pupils working under his direction. Although he was indisputably the master draughtsman and central creative genius, many different hands worked on the studio's industrial commissions, most famously Moyr Smith, who became a renown tile designer, and Archibald Knox, the future luminary of the English Arts & Crafts movement.
Uniquely, Dresser moved beyond the physical plane in search of design inspiration, and sought to portray abstractions of the elemental forces of nature. In his own words: "The designer's mind must be like the vital force of the plant, ever developing itself into forms of beauty, yet while thus free to produce, still governed by unalterable laws."
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