Elizabeth Eleanor D’Arcy Gaw

Elizabeth Eleanor D'Arcy Gaw (May 4, 1868 – November 12, 1944) was a prominent Arts and Crafts artist whose style influenced her former business partner Dirk van Erp and noted architect Lawrence Buck. She was the president of the California Guild of Arts and Crafts.

Biography Elizabeth Eleanor D’Arcy Gaw was born on May 4, 1868, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the daughter of Henry Woolsley Gaw (1834-1928), a brewer born in Ireland, and Elizabeth Jane Stripple (1842-1914). Her family moved to Idaho Springs, Colorado, before 1880 and Henry W. Gaw bought a brewery around 1876. They moved to Leadville before 1890 and The Gaw Brewery became the largest brewery in the area.

Elizabeth Eleanor D'Arcy Gaw attended local school in Leadville before entering the Art Institute of Chicago where she remained from 1892 to 1903 or 1904.

For a number of years, she was associated in business with Buck, that she knew from her Chicago time, when they worked together as "The Crafters". She made many of the floor plans and designs the interior decorating of his houses. Her specialty was interior decorating but she also won quite a name for herself for her hand wrought metal work and her designs in jewelry. Her designs for electric light fixtures, lamps and screens were particularly effective.

Cattail fire screen by Elizabeth Eleanor D’Arcy Gaw, c. 1909

In September 1909, D'Arcy Gaw entered into a partnership with Palmer's rival, Dirk van Erp, and they opened a studio on Sutter Street, San Francisco. The partnership with van Erp ceased on January 30, 1911; van Erp continued marking with the windmill device, with D'Arcy Gaw's name cut out from the stamp. Although their partnership lasted less than a year, D'Arcy Gaw exerted a strong and lasting influence on van Erp's design sensibility. He began making lamps to her design during this period, with shades incorporating mica panels. She did work on the homes of Henry Gaw and J. R. Thompson in San Jose and floor plans and conventional interior designing for the house Mrs. H. Campbell in Palo Alto. When Palmer, who had closed her shop in 1917, went back in business in 1932, D'Arcy Gaw went back working with her through the 1940s.

Elizabeth Eleanor D'Arcy Gaw died on November 12, 1944, in Monterey, California, at age 76, and is buried at Oak Hill Memorial Park, San Jose, with her family.