John Lockwood Kipling

John Lockwood Kipling CIE was a Yorkshire-born art teacher, illustrator and museum curator who spent most of his career in India. He was the father of the author Rudyard Kipling.

Lockwood Kipling was born in Pickering, North Riding, the son of Reverend Joseph Kipling and Frances nee Lockwood, and was educated at Woodhouse Grove School, a Methodist boarding school . He met his wife Alice MacDonald while working in Burslem, Staffordshire, where his designs can still be seen on the façade of the Wedgwood Institute.

Alice was the daughter of a Methodist minister, the Reverend George Browne Macdonald. Kipling married during 1865 and relocated with his wife to India, where he had been appointed as a professor of architectural sculpture in the Jeejeebhoy School of Art in Bombay (now Mumbai), and later became its principal.

Their son was born soon after, in December 1865, and was christened Rudyard after Rudyard, Staffordshire, the place where his parents had first met; their daughter Alice also known as Beatrice Kipling was born in 1868. His life-long friend John Griffiths, whom he had met whilst working together at the South Kensington Museum and worked with him at the Bombay School of Art, became Rudyard's godfather. During 1870–1872 Kipling was commissioned by the government to tour the Punjab, North-West Frontier and Kashmir and make a series of sketches of Indian craftsmen as well as various sights and antiquities in these regions. Several of these sketches are presently at the Victoria and Albert Museum whilst others were printed in a number of books.

During 1875, Kipling was appointed the Principal of Mayo School of Arts, Lahore, British India (present day National College of Arts, Pakistan) and also became curator of the old original Lahore Museum which figured as the Wonder House or Ajaib Ghar in Kim, not to be confused with the present one. He retired back to England in 1893.

Kipling illustrated many of Rudyard Kipling's books, and other works, including Tales of the Punjab by Flora Annie Steel. He also worked on the decorations for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and friezes on the Crawford Market in Bombay. The friezes of the Crawford Mark are done in a Romano-gothic style. The west entrance displays trader and sack-scales with porter, planter and water carrier around a well-head, while the east features several bullock carts. John Kipling designed the uniforms and decorations for the Imperial Assemblage at Delhi during 1877, organized by the Viceroy of India, Lord Lytton, at which Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India.

During his tenure as the Principal of the Mayo School of Art, Lahore, he patronized indigenous artisans and by training and apprenticeship transformed them into craftsmen and designers. One of his protégés was Bhai Ram Singh, who assisted him in his imperial commission for decorating the Durbar Room at Osborne House. Kipling also remained editor of the Journal of Indian Art and Industry, which published drawings made by the students of the Mayo School.

He died in 1911, and is buried in the parish of Tisbury, Wiltshire.

During 2017 the Bard Graduate Center had an exhibition of his work: John Lockwood Kipling: Arts & Crafts in the Punjab and London.

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