J.W. Chapman-Taylor

A DigitalNZ Story by Sienna Latham

London-born James Walter Chapman-Taylor immigrated to Taranaki with his family when he was just two years old. A skilled architect, he helped to popularize Arts & Crafts style in New Zealand, and strove to live according to the movement's tenets of honesty, beauty and the notion of a greater purpose. Chapman-Taylor's interests tended to the esoteric; his first concrete building was designed for the New Zealand branch of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He also worked as a professional astrologer during the 1940s and '50s. Active as a photographer from the early 1900s, he often experimented with different lenses and visual effects. These images illustrate the impressive variety and often otherworldly appeal of his work.

arts and crafts, photography, magic, ethereal, nature, spirituality, chapman taylor

J.W. Chapman-Taylor

The Wind in a frolic

The sea gives up its dead

A Forest vision

Cabbage tree (Cordyline indivisa)

A Grey Sea-Ebb, Palliser Bay

The Great Konini (16)

A Kitchen Fitment

The Tree of Many Branches, North Egmont bush (29)

Untitled (girl with photo album)

Pumpkin Cottage, Silverstream

T of TL

Grafton Bridge

Pathway of light

Doubting Castle

Untitled

Peter Pan on Mt Eden

Grafton Bridge

Wilkinson House - The Inner Court

Massey Memorial

The Goblin Bush

Kapiti Island at Sunset

Waikaremoana

Sunset, Waikaremoana

Spirit of mischief

Where it's always Afternoon

Te Whanganui a Tara

The Seeress

Tree of Gnomes, Stratford track, Egmont

The Fairy Wood