Although trained initially as a carver and later as an architect, Bruce James Talbert  (1838–1881) became a successful and influential decorator and furniture designer. He ran a prolific design studio employing numerous pupils and buying in work from freelance designers.

His textile designs were produced by Warner's as well as Templeton's, Cowlishaw, Nichol & Co. and Barbour & Miller and his carpet designs were woven by Templeton's and Brinton & Co. Talbert also designed metalwork for Cox & Sons, cast iron for the Colebrookdale Co., Barbone & Miller and Cowlishaw, Nichol & Co., and wallpapers for Jeffrey & Co.

Talbert served an apprenticeship as a wood-carver in Dundee and ran his own carving business for two years before joining the office of Charles Edward, a local architect. Around 1856 he moved to Glasgow, working first in the practice of the architect W. N. Tait and then with Campbell Douglas (1828-1910). In 1862 he moved to Manchester, where he worked for the cabinetmakers Doveston, Bird & Hull, then moved to Coventry the following year to work for the wood- and metalworkers Skidmore's Art Manufactures. In the mid-1860s Talbert moved to London, where he designed furniture for Holland & Sons' stand at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867. By 1868 he was designing furniture for Gillows of Lancaster and had returned to Dundee to set up a design practice. In 1868 he published his very influential first book Gothic Forms Applied to Furniture, Metal Work and Decoration for Domestic Purposes.

This work championed the Reformed Gothic style, with its decorative vocabulary of carved chevrons, inlaid or pierced quatrefoil motifs and chamfered edges. Talbert returned to London around 1869 to work as a freelance commercial designer, assisted by a small number of pupils. Fashionable Furniture was posthumously published in 1881.