Joseph Dandridge

Who was Joseph Dandridge?

Joseph Dandridge, was an English silk-pattern designer of Huguenot descent, a natural history illustrator, an amateur naturalist specialising in entomology, and a leading figure in the Society of Aurelians of which he was a founder member.

Despite having left no published works, and not being part of the close-knit collectors of the Royal Society, Dandridge is credited by numerous entomologists of his time with having provided invaluable assistance and access to his extensive collections of specimens, and even near the end of his life remaining 'affable and communicative'. The collections spanned, besides insects and arachnids, shells, fossils, birds' eggs and skins, flowering plants, lichens, mosses and fungi. A volume of 119 water-colours by Dandridge dating from before 1710 of the arachnids, accompanied by meticulous notes, is in the Sloane Collection of the British Museum and is designated Sloane MS 3999. W. S. Bristowe discovered that this work had been used without acknowledgement by Eleazar Albin in his Natural History of Spiders and other Curious Insects of 1736.

Large numbers of Huguenot silk weavers moved to the Spitalfields area at the end of the 17th century. One of the most noted silk producers was James Leman, who was both designer and manufacturer and made use of other designers such as Christopher Baudouin and Joseph Dandridge. A number of Dandridge's silk designs dating from 1717 to 1722 have found their way to the Victoria & Albert Museum and may be seen in the Prints & Drawings Study Room.