[Matthew Digby]. English architect and writer on art, born in Wiltshire, England, in 1820. He was a pupil at the Royal Academy, and also at art schools on the continent. As an architect, he superintended the work upon the Crystal Palace in London in 1851; and in 1852–54 had charge of the decorations and the fine-arts department of the building of the same name at Sydenham. In 1855 he received the appointment of surveyor to the British East India Company. He furnished designs for many architectural structures in India and Great Britain; was connected with the British Universal Exposition of 1862; was knighted in 1869; Slade professor of fine arts at Cambridge in 1869–72. He was author, among other works, of Industrial Arts of the Nineteenth Century (2 vols., 1851); Metal Work and its Artistic Design (1852); Geometrical Mosaics of the Middle Ages (1848); Art Treasures of the United Kingdom (1857); An Architect’s Note-Book in Spain (1872). He died in London on the 31st of May 1877.
