English poet who contracted in 1936 to buy nearly everything Dalí made, an arrangement that ran to the end of 1938 and produced the Lobster Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa. He arranged the introduction to Freud and was in the room for it.
James inherited a Sussex estate and a fortune at four years old and spent both on other people's work. Through the thirties he was the most significant private patron Surrealism had in Britain: he financed the Paris journal Minotaure, bought from René Magritte, Leonora Carrington and Leonor Fini, and in the summer of 1936 signed a contract with Salvador Dalí that gave him virtually everything Dalí produced until the end of 1938 in exchange for an allowance.
The Lobster Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa were made under that contract, for his own houses. He also arranged Dalí's introduction to Sigmund Freud and sat through the meeting on 19 July 1938. He published poetry throughout, was taken less seriously for it than he wanted to be, and spent his last decades building Las Pozas, a concrete Surrealist garden in the Mexican rainforest.
Sculpture · Surrealism
A working 1930s telephone with a painted plaster lobster fitted over its receiver, designed by Dalí for the patron Edward James and fabricated by Green & Abbott. Eleven lobster receivers turned a Surrealist image into a functional household object.
Patron of · 1936–1938
A contract drawn up in the summer of 1936 gave James virtually everything Dalí produced in exchange for an allowance, and ran to the end of 1938. The Lobster Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa were made under it.
Art & literary movement · 1924–1966
James was the movement's most important private patron in Britain, buying from Dalí and Magritte and financing the journal Minotaure. He was never a member; he paid for a great deal of what the members made.
Patron of · 1936–1938
A contract drawn up in the summer of 1936 gave James virtually everything Dalí produced in exchange for an allowance, and ran to the end of 1938. The Lobster Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa were made under it.
Associated with · 1935
James was the movement's most important private patron in Britain, buying from Dalí and Magritte and financing the journal Minotaure. He was never a member; he paid for a great deal of what the members made.