 Initially apprenticed in the Glasgow shipbuilding industry on the River Clyde, he trained as an artist at the Glasgow School of Art, where he met and married Jessie M. King in 1908.They moved to Salford, where he designed for George Wragge Ltd, producing many designs for stained-glass windows, including domestic work for the Scottish engineer Sir William Arrol at Seafield House in Ayr.Between 1911 and 1914 the Taylors lived in Paris where they established an art school – the Shearling Atelier.