John Paul Cooper

John Paul Cooper (3 October 1869 – 3 May 1933 ) was a British architect and a leading craftsman in the Arts and Crafts Movement, specialising in metalwork and jewellery. He is particularly noted for the use of materials such as shagreen and ostrich egg in combination with precious metals and gemstones.

Architecture Cooper studied architectural drawing for three years from 1888 as an apprentice to John Sedding in London and travelled in Europe in the 1890s with the architects Alfred Hoare Powell and Henry Wilson.

In the 1890s, he made various changes to buildings at St Margaret Works, Leicester for his father's company. He continued in architecture even after starting his own workshop, including building several cottages and an infant school. Wilson also introduced him to gesso and plasterwork techniques. Cooper set up a workshop in Kensington, sending four pieces to the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in 1899 but did not produce his first jewellery until 1900.

He became Head of the Metalwork Department at Birmingham School of Art from 1904 to 1907 having taught there from 1901 onwards. Several of the craftsmen he employed in his workshop moved with him to teach at Birmingham, including his wife. In his teaching he believed that designers of metalwork should only design items that they themselves had the skill to produce. As well as his jewellery and metalwork Cooper also produced watercolour paintings.

After the death of his father his inheritance enabled him to give up teaching and he moved to a rented house in Hunton. In 1910, he moved to Betsom's Hill, the highest hill in Kent, into a house and studio that he had designed himself in an 'Arts and Crafts homage to Kentish rural architecture'. and collaborated with Ernest Gimson from 1902 to 1906, making handles for his furniture.

Cooper's works now feature in many museums including the V&A.

Family life John Paul Cooper was the son of John Harris Cooper and grew up in Rotherby and then Evington Hall, Leicester. He worked with his second cousin May Morgan Oliver from 1899 and married her in 1901. He is buried in Cudham, Kent.

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