This is a firm of mosaic artists, of Old Trafford, Manchester, who executed mosaic decoration in many buildings in Ireland over a period ranging from circa 1890 until the 1960s.
The founder of the firm, Ludwig Oppenheimer, the elder, who was born in Brunswick, Germany, circa 1830, and married Susan McCulloch née Findlay, of Montrose, Scotland, established himself in business in Manchester in 1865.
According to the 1881 census he had an ’embroidery’ workshop employing thirteen men and fifteen women, but the 1891 census describes it as a mosaic workshop and records Ludwig’s eldest son Lehmann, aged twenty-two, as a designer, and the second and third sons, Ludwig the younger, aged twenty, and Albert, aged seventeen, as mosaic workers.
Ludwig the elder and Lehmann do not appear in the 1901 census, which shows the business being continued by Ludwig the younger and Albert. In fact Lehmann was still alive and living at Alexandra Park, Manchester, from which he exhibited two paintings at the Royal Academy in 1906 and 1907. He enlisted during the First World War and died in action at the age of forty-eight on 8 November 1916. He is buried in the Eastern Graveyard at Boulogne. In the records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission his profession is described as ‘designer of mosaics’.
The painter Charles Oppenheimer, RSA, RSW (1875-1961) appears to have been a younger brother of Lehmann, Ludwig the younger, and Albert. The mosaicist Eric Newton (born Frederick(?) Oppenheimer)(1893-1965) also worked in the family firm, which closed in the 1960s.
References
This article is taken from the Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720 – 1940, published by the Irish Architectural Archive. All information in this entry not otherwise accounted for is from Robert Field, ‘L. Oppenheimer and the Mosaics of Eric Newton’, a paper delivered at the 2006 conference of the Tiles and Architectural Ceramics Society, ‘Church Ceramics: decorative tiles, mosaic and terracotta during and after the Gothic Revival’, (last visited Dec 2012).
Two articles by Robert Field on the Oppenheimers’ work, ‘An unconventional French experience’ and ‘A legacy of inspiration and beauty’, have been published in Andamento (Journal of the British Association for Modern Mosaic), Vol. 2 (2008), 34-39, and Vol. 7 (2013), 22-33, respectively. Andfrom the English census returns of 1881, 1891 and 1901, from the data on Lehmann James Oppenheimer in the Debt of Honour Register, www.cwgc.org and from the researches of Michael Holland, Heritage Office, UCC.
