Daniel Cottier (1838 – 1891) was a British artist and designer born in Anderston, Glasgow, Scotland. His work was said to be influenced by the writing of John Ruskin, the paintings of the Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the work of William Morris. He painted allegorical figures in the Pre-Raphaelite style of Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. Cottier is considered to be an important influence on Louis Comfort Tiffany and also is credited with introducing the Aesthetic movement to America and Australia.

Cottier was interested in glass, furniture, ceramic manufacture, and interior design. His art furnishing business opened branches in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London between 1864 and 1869, and then in 1873 he opened more branches in New York, Sydney and Melbourne. In the United States he is seen as a 'harbinger of aestheticism….and a profound influence on American decoration'. And the same can be said of Scotland where he also exported the Aesthetic Movement to Scotland via his many professional and business contacts which he had made during his training and early career in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. So, by the time he moved to London in 1869, Cottier was already part of an influential and avart-garde group of designers—many of them also expatriate Scots—who were to establish the Aesthetic Movement in England.

Daniel Cottier was born in 1838, the son of Margaret McLean (1807–1885) and Daniel Cottier (1761–1843), a master mariner. In the Census of 1841, he is recorded with his family in Carrick Street, off the Broomielaw in Glasgow. By 1851, he was working as an apprentice coach painter, living in North Woodside Road. In 1861, he was boarding in Francis Street, St Pancras, London, working as a glass designer. In 1866, he married Marion Millar Field, of Edinburgh, and in 1867, their daughter, Isabella was born. They had four children, Archibald (1868) who died of whooping cough aged 20 months, William (1869), Alexander and Margaret.

His training began as an apprentice to glazing and decorating firm in Glasgow in the 1850s, first with the firm of David Keir (1802–65), then with John Cairney & Co (1828–65). Cairney's circle included the architect and designer Alexander "Greek" Thomson (1817–75), who was of international stature and one of the most original interpreters of the Greek Revival style. When Thomson was designing a building, he included coloured decoration, furniture and carpets in his drawings. His ornamentation and colour schemes also drew from Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian cultures. Cottier in all probability came into contact, whilst an apprentice at Cairney's, with this unified eclecticism of Aesthetic Movement interiors of the 1870s.

Cottier subsequently worked for the stainer James Ballantine in Edinburgh, and attended evening classes at the Trustees' Academy, at which 'Ornamental Design' was taught. Around 1859 he went to London, where he may have worked for the stained glass makers, Ward & Hughes, while attending evening classes at the Working Men's College at 31 Red Lion Square in the East End. Here he heard lectures given by the critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) and received drawing lessons from the artist Ford Madox Brown (1821–93). Cottier could not have been closer to the Pre-Raphaelites or to the stirrings of the Aesthetic Movement: in 1861 William Morris (1834–96) opened his decorating and furnishing partnership across from the College, at 8 Red Lion Square. This may have exposed Cottier to the colour theories being developed by Morris, whose subtle and resonant tertiary hues were beginning to replace the archaeologically inspired mid-century primaries favoured by designers such as Thomson.

In 1862, Cottier returned to Scotland to accept an appointment as manager of Field & Allan, a firm of slaters, glaziers and decorators based in Edinburgh and Leith (1797–1910). Here he oversaw the glazing and decoration of Peddie and Kinnear's Pilrig Parish Church, Leith (c. 1862–63). The surviving geometric glass cycle, bold and vigorous, was based on medieval grisaille work. It shows that by now Cottier had developed a keen sense of colour harmony, heavily reliant on the juxtaposition of contrasting primary or tertiary colours.

After managing Field & Allan for two years, Cottier felt sufficiently confident to open his own business in Edinburgh aged 26. He shared the top floor of 24 George Street with the architects Campbell Douglas and J. J. Stevenson. Cottier persuaded Andrew Wells (1845–1915), his talented young assistant at Field & Allan, to join the new venture, together with Stephen Adam (1848–1910) from Ballantine & Co, and Charles Gow (1830–1891). However, Cottier's connection with Field & Allan did not end completely: he married Marion, the late William Field's daughter, in Edinburgh on 15 June 1866.

At the 1867 Paris International Exhibition, Cottier's armorial window received a prize, and was praised as 'magnificent …superb harmony of colours …the finest ornamental window in the Exhibition'. Encouraged by his growing success, in 1869 he moved the centre of his activities to London where, at 2 Langham Place, in partnership with Brydon, Wallace and John Bennett, he established 'Cottier and Company', which advertised as 'art furniture makers, mural decorators, and glass and tile painters'. Cottier may have been drawn to London by the artistic community of expatriate Scots who had settled there, referred to as 'the London brethren'. However, Cottier & Co's order books continued to be dominated by commissions in Scotland, and the studio expanded. Around 1871 Norman McLeod Macdougall (1852–1939) followed Cottier to London, where he became the chief glass painter and latterly designer. Cottier also began to visit Europe as he developed an interest in art dealing, which brought him into contact with Vincent van Gogh and Dutch artist, Matthew Maris (1839–1917), who arrived in London to work for Cottier around 1872. Maris, who accompanied him on visits to Norway and elsewhere, has been credited as the designer of 'some of Cottier's most successful windows of the 1870s'. Certainly, the figures on a window such as the Musician Angels at St Machar's Cathedral, Aberdeen (1873), assume the strong contraposto poses which often appear in Maris's drawings. Cottier was also responsible for decorating the interiors of the new Chapel at Cluny Castle in Aberdeenshire, before the Chapel later burnt down in the 1930s. Maris also painted panels for Cottier, but as he found the watery consistency of glass paints made them difficult to use, he later explained that 'the only things that exist by my hand (from Cottier's studio) I painted with oil colours against the light'.