Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Bemrose, William
BEMROSE, WILLIAM (1831–1908), writer on wood-carving, born at Derby on 30 Dec. 1831, was second son in a family of three sons and one daughter of William Bemrose of Derby, founder in 1827 of the printing and publishing firm of William Bemrose & Sons of Derby and London. His mother was Elizabeth Ride of Lichfield. His elder brother, Henry Howe Bemrose (1827-1912), was conservative member of parliament for Derby from 1895 to 1900 and was knighted in 1897.
After education at King William's College in the Isle of Man, Bemrose, like his brother Henry, joined his father's business. The business, which passed to the management of the two brothers on their father's retirement in 1857, grew rapidly in all directions. A publishing house was established in London, with branch offices at Leeds and Manchester, and the printing works were repeatedly extended, Bemrose, although always active in the printing business, pursued many other interests. In middle life he became a director of the Royal Crown Derby Porcelain Works, and thus helped to revive an important local industry.
Bemrose chiefly devoted his leisure to travel and to a study of varied forms of art, on which he wrote with much success. Practising in early life artistic pastimes like wood-carving, fret-cutting, and modelling in clay, he compiled useful manuals concerning them for the instruction of amateurs which were well illustrated and circulated widely. The chief of these was his 'Manual of Wood-carving' (1862), the first work of its kind in England, which attained standard rank, reaching a twenty-second edition in 1906. There followed 'Fret-cutting and Perforated Carving ' (Derby, 1868) ; 'Buhl Work and Marquetry' (1872); 'Paper Rosette Work and how to Make it' (1873) ; 'Instructions in Fret-cutting with Designs' (1875) ; and 'Mosaicon : or Paper Mosaic and how to Make it' (1875).
Meanwhile Bemrose's association with the local pottery led him to publish three authoritative works on china. The first, 'The Pottery and Porcelain of Derbyshire' (1870), he wrote in collaboration with A. Wallis. But 'Bow, Chelsea and Derby Porcelain' (1898) and 'Longton Hall Porcelain' (1906) were solely his own. Bemrose was also a clever amateur painter in oils and water-colours and collected pictures, china, and articles of 'vertu,' especially rare specimens of Egyptian art, which he acquired on visits to the East. In 1885 he published a sumptuously illustrated and finely printed 'Life and Work of Joseph Wright, A.R.A., commonly called Wright of Derby.' He also wrote on technical education and archæological and ceramic subjects. Bemrose, who was elected a F.S.A. in 1905, played an active part in local affairs of Derby. He was chairman of the Derby Art Gallery Committee, a member of the Derbyshire Archæological Society, and vice-president of the Derby Sketching Club. A member of the Derby school board from 1879, he was its chairman from 1886 to 1902, and was a founder and for many years chairman of the Railway Servants' Orphanage. A pioneer of the volunteer movement, he retired as lieutenant in the 1st Derby volunteers in 1874 after seventeen years' service. He died at Bridlington, while on a short holiday, on 6 Aug. 1908, and was buried at the new cemetery, Derby.
Bemrose married (1) in 1858 Margaret Romana (d. 1901), only daughter of Edward Lloyd Simpson of Spondon, by whom he had five sons and one daughter; (2) in 1903 Lilian, daughter of William John Gumming, M.R.C.S., of Matlock, and widow of Alderman William Hobson of Derby, proprietor of the 'Derbyshire Advertiser.' His second wife survived him.
[The Times, 8 Aug. 1908; the Derby Express, 8 Aug. 1908; private information.]