Profile for Robert Weir Schultz from Bute (page 1)

[close] Robert Weir Schultz (26 July 1860 – 29 April 1951) was a Scottish Arts and Crafts architect, artist, landscape designer and furniture designer. He did much work on the Isle of Bute. Almost all of his buildings are now category A listed buildings, reflecting the high quality of his work. He was born in Port Glasgow son of Henry Schultz, a Greenock sugar refiner, and Isabella Small Weir, the daughter of Dr Robert Weir of Galashiels. Due to this family connection, when Henry Schultz died in 1863 the infant Robert was sent to Galashiels to be raised by his aunt Jane, the wife of Dr Alexander Cunningham Tweedie.

In 1876 Robert was articled to work under Robert Rowand Anderson. In January 1884 he moved to work as assistant to Richard Norman Shaw. Here he also became acquainted with the newly created Art Workers Guild set up by Shaw's other assistants: Edward Schroeder Prior, Ernest Newton, Mervyn Macartney and William Richard Lethaby. In 1887 he won a travelling scholarship and, with funding supplemented by the Marquess of Bute (who he had met through Robert Rowand Anderson and Dr Edwin Freshfield, he travelled Italy, Greece and the Near East, partly in the company of Sidney Barnsley. In 1889, as part of his travels, he became a member of the British School at Athens.

In 1890 he also officially joined the Art Workers Guild and secured a commission by his travel sponsor, the 3rd Marquess of Bute, for alterations at Mount Stuart House. Further work for Bute included restoration at Dumfries House and major renovation and alteration of The House of Falkland in Fife. Schultz continued working for his successor, the 4th Marquess, the most significant of which was at St. Andrew's Chapel in Westminster Cathedral. Schultz's mosaic design, based partly on St. Andrew's connections with Constantinople.