The BBC Radio for Schools books were a wonder for illustrators and young artists, a chance to showcase a style but also work with a brief given by the BBC based on whatever the topic was about. In the days when Radio was a more dominant media than television the BBC had opportunities for the public and schools to buy printed booklets on the shows with more information and sometimes pictures too.
A music series offering children opportunities to listen to music and sing along, with creative suggestions and games to develop music appreciation and skills.
Bernard Cheese – Cover to Singing Songs,
Below are the drawings made by Bernard Cheese in 1968. As the BBC wanted to save money the booklets were normally one colour and black on white paper. Here Cheese is working with pure Cyan. Some of them use dotted plastic film that was used in the printing process then, normally to save money on ink and to add shading. But in the cover picture above there are various features going on that make it a remarkable print technically. The band in black but with the drum and flag decoration shaded in blue, the crowd to the right are in black at the front and behind in blue – a cunning use of limited colours. The shading too is in blue and black dots. This is a process that the other images have been separated up using.
The following illustrations are curious as they incorporate parts of 19th century illustrations, likely from religious books like the Quiver, the sea and the trees are clearly from steel engravings, the King and Queen I also suspect are not from Cheese’s own hand. It is a jolly way to use and recycle such illustrations.
Although not a post on art per se it is an account of a family and their links with art.
Lord Sempill
William Francis Forbes-Sempill, 19th Lord Sempill, was a Scottish peer and record-breaking air pioneer who was later shown to have passed secret information to the Imperial Japanese military before the Second World War.
Educated at Eton, he began his career as a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps and then served in the Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force during the First World War. In 1921, Sempill led an official military mission to Japan that showcased the latest British aircraft. In subsequent years he continued to aid the Imperial Japanese Navy in developing its Navy Air Service.
In the 1920s, Sempill began giving military secrets to the Japanese. Although his activities were uncovered by British Intelligence, Sempill was not prosecuted for spying and allowed to continue in public life. He was eventually forced to retire from the Royal Navy in 1941 after being discovered passing on secret material to Tokyo shortly before Japan declared war in the Pacific.
John Lavery – Eileen in Primrose Yellow, 1926
Eileen Lavery
In 1919 Sempill married Eileen Marion Lavery, daughter of the Irish painter Sir John Lavery the WW1 War Artist. Eileen was Lavery’s only child. Shortly after giving birth and suffering from tuberculosis, Kathleen MacDermott, her mother, died in November 1891.
When her father took up permanent residence in London 1898. Eileen attended Holy Cross Convent School at Rochampton, and accompanied her father on his annual trips to Tangier before her marriage to James Dickinson in 1912. This marriage failed after the birth of their first child and Eileen and James divorced.
John Lavery – R23 Type British Airships at Pulham St Mary, Norfolk, 1918
In 1920 Eileen married William Francis Forbes-Sempill, later Lord Sempill of Craigevar with whom she had two further children.
Their first daughter, Ann Moira, was born in 1920. Their second daughter, June Mary, was born in 1923, and was killed aged 18 as a result of enemy action on 11 May 1941 – the last day of the Blitz – at 15 Basil Street, London, just behind Harrods. She had been serving with the WVS Mobile Canteen Service. Eileen died in 1935.
Eric Ravilious – Wood Engraved Trade Card for Dunbar Hay Ltd, 1938
Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn
Lord Sempill would remarry, Cecilia Alice Dunbar-Kilburn, the daughter of Bertram Edward Dunbar-Kilburn, a
patent agent.
Cecilia would open the shop ‘Dunbar Hay Ltd’ of 15 Albemarle Street, London W1. It was founded in 1936 with and Athole Hay and gave opportunities for graphic artists and students from the Royal College of Art. These included Eric Ravilious, Eric Bawden and Enid Marx, to show their designs, including furniture, furnishings, ceramics, fabrics, patterns. Ravilious designed the wood-engraved trade card for the shop, which closed in 1940 because of WW2
In 1947 Cecilia would publish a monograph on English pottery and china as part of the Britian in pictures series of books.
Sir Ewan Forbes, 11th Baronet
Sir Ewan Forbes of Craigievar, 11th Baronet (6 September 1912 – 12 September 1991) was a Scottish nobleman, general practitioner and farmer. Due to the presence of an intersex condition at birth, he was christened Elizabeth Forbes-Sempill, and officially registered as the youngest daughter of John, Lord Sempill. After an uncomfortable upbringing, he began living as a man at the start of his medical career in 1945. He formally re-registered his birth as male in 1952, adopting the name of “Ewan Forbes-Sempill”, and was married a month later.
In 1965, he stood to inherit his elder brother’s baronetcy, together with a large estate. This inheritance was challenged by his cousin, who argued that the re-registration was invalid; under this interpretation, Forbes would legally be considered a woman, and thus unable to inherit. The legal position was unclear, and it took three years before a ruling by the Court of Session was finally upheld by the Home Secretary, granting him the title.
Roland Vivian Pitchforth was 44 when war was declared. He was one of the few artists to get the job done. He painted every type of scene you could think of and accurately.
The spotlight after the war fell on more abstract artists. I blame gallery curators who want to make an easy (lazy?) link between the wars; the abstract paintings of Paul Nash of the First World War next to the paintings of Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore’s Second. In this funk I think Roland Vivian Pitchforth lost out, as did Eric Ravilious until his work was reviewed again in the 1970s. I think it is time these works are championed.
After almost a year of bureaucratic wrangling with the start up of the War Artists’ Advisory Committee, Pitchforth was made an official war artist.
Kenneth Clark was chairman of the War Artists’ Advisory Committee. That committee was part of the Ministry of Information. Clark would describe the ministry and its role succinctly, if rather negatively, in his autobiography:
It was said to contain 999 employees… [Its] large staff had been recruited to deal with three or four different objects. The first, and most defensible, was censorship; the second the provision of news; the third a feeble attempt at propaganda through various media; and the fourth to provide a kind of wastepaper-basket into which everyone could throw their grievances and their war-winning proposals.
The official role of war art had been, after much difficulty, established during the First World War. (In part, the idea had succeeded because the Germans had already developed such a scheme of their own, and the English felt a need to rival their enemy.) The essential purpose was that artists should provide a record of the war; and in some instances, (though it was not required, or expected) they might create something beyond reportage or official portraits – works of art in their own right. †
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Post Office Buildings, 1941
From 1940 to 1945, Pitchforth served as an official war artist for the Ministries of Information, Home Security, Supply and for the Admiralty. In March 1940, he was given a brief to depict the work of the Air Raid
Precaution (ARP) organisation and in December secured a six month
appointment with the Ministries of Home Security and Supply.
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Repairing Telephone Cables, 1941
In a series of pencil, watercolour, oil and lithograph pieces, he depicted ARP training, war damage, military production and naval scenes. Many of these were singled out for praise by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee (WAAC) and exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1941. He also painted a series of London war damage scenes including a number of paintings of the House of Commons in 1941
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Repairing Telephone Cables, 1941
His artist’s eye picked out the many bleak and surreal sights on London’s bomb sites. In March 1941, he described sketching damaged lift shafts open to the elements: “They look like dead prehistoric animals lying
over the jagged walls.”
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – The City Temple Church, London, EC4, 1941
Pitchforth subsequently specialised in coastal scenes, joined several naval convoys to Gibraltar and the Azores and produced paintings on RAF test flights and maintenance subjects.
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Loading Stores for Italy at Algiers, 1944
Commissioned in October 1943 as a temporary captain in the Royal Marines, Pitchforth was attached to the Royal Navy and in 1945 was sent by South Eastern Command to record the naval campaigns to retake Burma and Ceylon. During the British assault on Rangoon, he assisted in the camouflaging of his group’s amphibious craft. He captured the events in a series of paintings of Colombo Harbour and in The First British troops in Rangoon (1945). At war’s end, Pitchforth acquired a lung infection and spent 1945-1946 convalescing in South Africa (he still managed to exhibit at Wildenstein’s Gallery) before returning to London in 1948.
It is not surprising that you can still find the locations of Pitchforth’s paintings in London, but due to bombing and redevelopment some of the shops have changed shape.
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Sunday Morning, Great Titchfield Street, London, 1941
The Street Today, Google Maps.
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Chamber of the House of Commons, Bomb Damage, 1940–1945
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – AFS Practice with a Trailer-pump : On the banks of the Serpentine, London, 1941
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Fire-hose Practice in St James’s Park, London, 1941
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Protection Pits for Dispersed Aircraft, Lee-on-Solent, 1941
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – A New Runway, Lee-on-Solent, 1941
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – A Swordfish Aircraft Getting Ready to Take Off, 1941
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – A Royal Observer Corps Post, Rottingdean, 1944
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – An AA Battery, 1943
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – WAAFs Packing Parachutes, 1940
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Raw Materials for 4.5 Anti-aircraft Shells, 1941
Roland Vivian Pitchforth – Night Transport, 1940
† Peter Stansky & William Abrahams – London’s Burning – Life, Death & Art in the Second World War. 1994. p16
Both beautiful and inspiring, the artwork that Shell used on their posters was a shift in advertising for two reasons: They were selling the ambitions of the motorist beyond commuting; a generation of day-trippers without trains. Also they were presenting modern art to the public in an era when museums charged admission. The posters were pasted on the sides of petrol stations, lorries and billboards with that simple line “You Can Be Sure of Shell”.
Shell Mex Limited appointed a new Publicity Director in 1932, Jack Beddington. His insight turned the British Shell advertisements of the 1930s into one of the classic campaigns of the twentieth century. The genius of the campaign was to let artists depict Britain in their own styles, they would paint an image and whatever their style, it was surrounded by text. There would be no need for product placement, for models holding petrol cans, it was a campaign exposing the beauty and wonder of Britain and modern art.
Some of these posters were exhibited at the New Burlington Galleries in 1934. Below are two quotes from different reviews on the exhibition that show the surprise of critics to Beddington’s use of modern artists in poster design.
It is now a good many years since, under the able directorship of Mr Frank Pick, some of our best designers were encouraged to show their works in public – using the expression in its broadest sense. People who never though of going to picture galleries could, for the first time find delight in good pictorial art even in an Underground station and in the street. –
Apollo, January to June, 1934, p322 †
If it can be hoped that big firms like Shell-Mex are really going to patronize art as intelligently as this, we shall expect to be seeing in a few years’ time at Christie’s, not the sale of the collection of the Duke of Frumpshire, but of the Gas Light and Coke Company. If the princes of commerce are going to behave like princes we shall have some fun. ‡
The Everywhere You Go series is one of the more curious for it is before the typographic design for the posters had settled down, a range of typefaces, colours and sizes are used. The first offering by W J Steggles has the tag line in lowercase. Steggles was part of the now fashionable, East London Group of artists, he painted various scenes for Shell posters, as did his brother Harold and
Elwin Hawrhorne.
Walter James Steggles – The Thames at Cookham
Edgar Ainsworth – Gordale Scar
Elwin Hawrhorne – North Foreland Lighthouse
Robert Miller – Devil’s Elbow, Braemar
Harold Steggles – Bungay
Rosemary and Clifford Ellis – Lower Slaughter
Graham Sutherland – Oust Houses nr Leeds, Kent
M. A. Miles – Polperro Cornwall
Charles Mozley – Boxhill
John Armstrong – Newlands Corner
Graham Sutherland – The Great Globe, Swanage
George Hooper – Kintbury Berks
John Armstrong – Near Lamorna
Paul Nash – Rye Marshes
Edward Wakeford – Gravesend
† Apollo, January to June, 1934, p322
‡ W.W.Winkworth – The Spectator – 29 JUNE 1934, p15
Catherine McDermott – Design Museum Book of Twentieth Century Design, 1998, p319
Rather like my post on Graham Clarke, where I complained of his etchings and promoted his linocuts, in this post I would sooner promote and have a Sutherland etching than any of his other works.
I don’t know why I dislike so many of his paintings and to my opinion he only got worse with time. His work before WW2 seemed to have the sinister lust for mocking everything into destruction. It is almost as if he was calling for the war and then to use it as source material afterwards.
Frederick Landseer Griggs – Southwell Minster, 1916
Sutherland was apprenticed as an engineer before studying engraving at Goldsmiths College in London. His tutor was F. L. Griggs, who had been working as an illustrator for the Highways and Byways series of books. These publications bought to light the modern ability to travel by bus, car or train around the country. Griggs pen drawings for these books, I would say, were the point when romantic nostalgia came back into fashion and his students would have been exposed to this.
‘He had a palm as delicate as gossamer,’ Sutherland remembered, it was his drawn illustrations to the thirteen volumes of the Highways and Byways guidebooks which had inspired both Piper and Sutherland as boys. When the older man offered both friendship and technical advice Sutherland was flattered to receive it. He and Paul Drury spent the Christmas of 1926 with Griggs learning about inking plates and printing them. Above all he helped to augment their growing enthusiasm for Palmer. †
Samuel Palmer – Landscape, Girl Standing, 1826
In autumn 1924 William Larkins showed his friends a Palmer print The Herdsman’s Cottage, which he had bought in Charing Cross Road. This tiny work came as a revelation to them all. Sutherland recalled: I remember I was amazed by its completeness, both emotional and technical. It was unheard of at the school to cover the plate almost completely with work and quite new to us that the complex variety and multiplicity of lines could form a tone of such luminosity. †
The landscapes were daring and drawn from unexpected viewpoints: The Girl in the Ploughed Field astonished me with its total disregard for conventional composition. The drawing is almost what we today call naïf. †
So, as noted, the biggest change in style for Sutherland at this time from the teaching of Griggs into the engraving style of Palmer works would be to etching the sky. The image Number Fourty-Nine above from 1924 has a clean sky where as the images below have engraving all over the etching-plate.
In the 1920s, when photographs were being used as illustrations, the question of art was in doubt; why should an artist depict a scene when the camera can do the job for them? So the result was that an artist can bend reality. From this came an ideal eden like view of the past and a retelling of rural life before the invention of machines. Later on the art world would rebel against the camera and surrealist, cubist and impressionist styles would be invented.
The 1920s was the start of a revival for Palmer, unpublished plates were being printed, the Medici Society published his other works for the public and books were being scribed.
Other artists worth noting are Robin Tanner or Paul Drury, both new converts to the church of Samuel Palmer’s work. These men walked the first steps in the world of the New Romantics, coming out of Goldsmiths College at that time.
Paul Drury – September, 1928
Robin Tanner – The Road Mender, 1928
All men at the same time made an impact on the artworld and they all shared themes, knowingly or not. Below are the etchings of Sutherland.
Graham Sutherland – Wood Interior, 1929
Graham Sutherland – Cray Fields, 1925
Graham Sutherland – Pecken Wood, 1925
I thought it worth including this study by Sutherland of a print. Looking more like a mono-print it has all the qualities of Palmer’s work as it is done in ink and oil paint. The final etching is below.
Graham Sutherland – Sketch for Pastoral, 1930
Graham Sutherland – Pastoral, 1930
Graham Sutherland – Oast House, 1932
These words would get translated in various styles into Sutherland’s work but one of the most restrained and pleasing was this Shell Poster.
Graham Sutherland – Shell Poster – Oust Houses, Near Leeds, Kent, 1932
† The Spirit of Place: Nine Neo-Romantic Artists and Their Times, 2001, p108
Stuart Sillars – British Romantic Art and the Second World War, 1991, p42
André Villers et Pablo Picasso – Picasso dans le jardin de La Californie, 1961
Picasso was always interested in trying every medium of the arts. So in 1961 it comes as no surprise that he joined the photographer André Villers to work on a series of collaborative decoupages. These were drawings and paper cut outs by Picasso with photographs by Villers. Most of the works were published in 1962.
Pablo Picasso – Selection of some of the Paper cut outs, 1961
The Picasso paper cut outs where layered in the way the cyanotype is, placing items on photographic paper in a dark room and exposing natural light to them. Items placed on the paper would, after processing come out white on a black background; the paper drawings would appear white when processed. This negative would then be placed with one of Villers photograph negatives, a leaf, tree… the black areas of Picasso’s images would be transparent when processed and exposed as one picture. The result is a series of naive paper-cuts in cubic style and silly humour.
Pablo Picasso – L’Homme aux Chats II, 1962
Pablo Picasso – L’Homme aux Chats I, 1962
André Villers and Pablo Picasso – Diurnes: Nunc, 1962
André Villers and Pablo Picasso – Le Corrigan Effeuille, 1962
André Villers and Pablo Picasso – Un General, 1962
André Villers and Pablo Picasso – Le Corrigan a la Dentelle, 1962
André Villers and Pablo Picasso – Vacarme, 1962
André Villers and Pablo Picasso – Hic, 1962
André Villers and Pablo Picasso – Le Garou, 1962
André Villers and Pablo Picasso – Untitled, 1962
André Villers and Pablo Picasso – La Chèvre à l’Horizon, 1962
André Villers and Pablo Picasso – La Chèvre au Grillage, 1962
This post covers a range of designs for the General Post Office by the artists of Great Bardfield, I think the post also shows the troubles of being a designer and how often artists were asked to submit designs and have them rejected.
We start with Sheila Robinson, who was the wife of Bernard Cheese and mother of artist Chloe Cheese. Like many of the Great Bardfield artists, Robinson was a print-maker but unlike most print-makers she used cardboard as a medium giving her prints a unique subtle quality. Her first commission for the Post Office would be to design one of two stamps for the 900th Anniversary of Westminster Abbey in 1966.
Miss Sheila Robinson, an art teacher at the Royal College of Art, designed the 3p stamp (No. 452). This was her first attempt at stamp designing and her full name appears as imprint on the stamps. The 3p stamps, printed by Harrison and Sons.
Sheila Robinson – 900th Anniversary of Westminster Abbey Stamp, 1966.
Her next commission would be four years later as part of the British Rural Architecture set of four stamps, Robinson designed two stamps, the other two being designed by David Gentleman. Released on 11th February 1970, they were in circulation for one year. The final designs were Welsh Stucco and Ulster Thatch.
Sheila Robinson – Welsh Stucco Stamp, 1970
Sheila Robinson – Ulster Thatch, 1970
Above: Part of the information packet to the stamps
Below: are two other stamp designs and one prototype design.
Sheila Robinson – Abingdon (Linocut published by The Post Office), 1965
George Chapman had designed posters for Shell and the GPO. After he moved from Great Bardfield he moved to Wales, painting pictures in limited palates of colour, this is a grim looking image with the setting sun.
George Chapman – GPO Poster: This is Aberayron Cardiganshire, 1962
Denise Hoyle is the wife of Walter Hoyle and designed some simple posters for the Post Office savings bank, with the artwork being made from collages.
Denise Hoyle – Post Office Savings Bank,
Denise Hoyle – Post Office Savings Bank
Walter Hoyle’s poster designs for the Savings Bank are also curiously off, depicting daily life but in an unfashionable way. Harlow looks wretched with a Golly in the corner and Morris Dancing is hardly popular. The Pennan, Aberdeenshire poster has a beautiful painting with it but feels very lonely.
Walter Hoyle – Harlow, New Town, Post Office Savings Bank,
Walter Hoyle – Morris Dancers, Dunmow, Thaxted.
Walter Hoyle – Post Office Savings Bank – Four Nations.
Walter Hoyle – Post Office Pennan, Aberdeenshire, GPO Poster, 1954
Walter Hoyle – Artwork for Post Office Pennan, Aberdeenshire, 1954
Eric Ravilious only work for the Post Office was a invitation to design a stamp to commemorate 100 years since the introduction of the Penny Black, the first adhesive stamp. Sadly this was not commissioned.
Eric Ravilious – Design for Stamp, 1940
Edward Bawden’s work for the GPO included work that was and wasn’t commissioned. The Post Office Tube Railway was used as a poster with Printed text blow on another sheet.
Edward Bawden – Post Office Tube Railway, 1935
The poster Bawden designed for London Transport to advertise Kew Gardens would be turned into stamps later along with other artists. The full image is on the poster but on the stamp they have cropped it.
Edward Bawden – Kew Gardens Poster for London Underground, 1936
Edward Bawden – Kew Gardens Stamp, 1993
Below is a telegram design by Bawden that was not used by the GPO.
In the archives are lists showing that many well-known artists had not only been considered but had actually been invited to proffer designs. That so many of these invitees did not result in published telegrams may have been a combination of reluctance on the side of the artist and under-confidence or economy on the side of the Post Office.
A list, … included McKnight Kauffer, Graham Sutherland, Edward Bawden, Gwen Raverat and Fougasse. And a further list some two years later, in 1937, apparently emanating from Beddington, included Robin Darwin, Claude Flight, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Cedric Morris, John Nash and Clare Leighton. Many of these were subsequently formally invited to submit roughs. †
Edward Bawden – Telegram Design, 1935
† Ruth Artmonsky – Bringer of Good Tidings. Greetings Telegrams, 2009 – p22
Here is a series of images from La Fontaine’s fable The Cat Transformed into a Woman by different artists with the poem translated.
Marc Constantin’s song sheet – The Cat transformed into a woman from the La Fontaine’s fable, 1846.
A bachelor caressed his cat,
A darling, fair, and delicate;
So deep in love, he thought her mew
The sweetest voice he ever knew.
By prayers, and tears, and magic art,
The man got Fate to take his part;
And, lo! one morning at his side
His cat, transformed, became his bride.
Edward Bawden – My Cat Wife, 1986
In wedded state our man was seen
The fool in courtship he had been.
No lover ever was so bewitched
By any maiden’s charms
As was this husband, so enriched
By hers within his arms.
He praised her beauties, this and that,
And saw there nothing of the cat.
In short, by passion’s aid, he
Thought her a perfect lady.
It was night: some carpet gnawing mice
Disturbed the nuptial joys.
Excited by the noise,
The bride sprang at them in a trice;
Tirzah Garwood – The Cat Wife, 1928
The mice were scared and fled.
The bride, scarce in her bed,
The gnawing heard, and sprang again,
And this time not in vain,
For, in this novel form arrayed,
Of her the mice were less afraid.
Through life she loved this mousing course,
So great is stubborn nature’s force.
In mockery of change, the old
Will keep their youthful bent.
When once the cloth has got its fold,
The smelling-pot its scent,
In vain your efforts and your care
To make them other than they are.
To work reform, do what you will,
Old habit will be habit still.
Nor fork nor strap can mend its manners,
Nor cudgel-blows beat down its banners.
Secure the doors against the renter,
And through the windows it will enter.
Marc Chagall – The Cat Transformed into a Woman, 1926
In 1926 Ambroise Vollard commissioned Chagall to illustrate La Fontaine’s ‘Fables’. ‘The Cat Transformed into a Woman’ illustrates the story of a man who so adored his cat that he was able to turn her into a woman and marry her. He thought she would be the perfect wife. However, he soon realised he could not change her in every respect, as she still chased mice. †
I bought this book the other day, it is Amelia by Henry Fielding from 1906, published by George Bell and Sons, later rebound by ‘Everybody’s Rebound’, run by the publishers Everybody’s Books. On the cover is this:
– This is a rebound copy of a book worth reading published by a well-known publisher. – We are rebinding books such as this in order that as many books as possible may do their job twice and so help the vital “Save Paper” Campaign. – If you have any books of any kind, and in any condition, that you can spare send or bring them to us and we will make you the highest cash offer.
I can only guess the Save Paper Campaign was from the Second World War. Everybody’s Books were based at 156 Charing Cross Road and 4 Denmark Street. It was a cunning idea to take old books and re-brand them as their own. As one thing leads to another… The building of the publishers has a curious history.
The Rolling Stones recorded at Regent Sound Studio based at 4 Denmark Street.
156 Charing Cross Road has now been demolished but stood close to Centre Point in London. The building was taken by George Allen. In 1890 Allen opened a London publishing house at 8 Bell Yard, Chancery Lane; and in 1894 he moved to a larger place at 156 Charing Cross Road. There he took to general publishing, though Ruskin’s works remained the major part of his business. He died in 1907 but the publishing house Allen and Unwin lives on. While there George Allen named the building Ruskin House.
Some time in 1909 George Allen moved from the building. The offices of the building were then occupied by the Woman’s Press from 5 May 1910 until October 1912. Established in 1907, the Woman’s Press has been described as “..an all-encompassing, self-funding propaganda division” of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). The premises at Charing Cross Road constituted a shop at ground floor level, and offices of the Woman’s Press above. The shop stocked a range of campaign-themed goods such as ribbons and rosettes, as well as other items like tea and soap which featured their motto ‘Votes for Women’. The upstairs offices housed the WSPU’s wholesale and retail operations, however the editorial division remained based at the union’s Clements Inn headquarters. Despite its name, the printing was largely undertaken by St Clements Press near Clements Inn.
It is likely that after the WSPU came Everybody’s Books in the late 30s.
The Woman’s Press, Ruskin House, 156 Charing Cross, London.
After returning from Africa and Europe via Dunkirk, Edward Bawden continued his war work and went to paint army maneuvers at Dunwich on the Suffolk coast. Troop and tank testing with flame throwers on the heath and in the woodland. But this post really is about Bawden’s return there in 1948 in peacetime, but the war work makes a curious contrast.
Edward Bawden – Exercise Kruschen (Dunwich Common): Ronson Flame-throwers, 1943
Edward Bawden – Exercise Kruschen (Dunwich Common): Tank Fascines; the ‘Snake’ Ronson flame-thrower, 1943
1948
It is reported that John Nash and Edward Bawden went on a trip to Dunwich, staying at the Barne Arms (Now the Ship). It is probable to guess that John Aldridge joined them too. Below are various pictures from that trip.
Edward Bawden – Cliffs at Dunwich, 1948
Edward Bawden -The Church at Dunwich, 1948
Edward Bawden – Ilex & Fir, Greyfriars Wood, 1948
The most curious trick that Bawden uses are in some of the following paintings, the main features are just outline, the bridge in Lovers Lane, the Ash Bins and also the Coastguard station on the cliffs – just the most simple and abstracted forms. In Cliffs at Dunwich painting above the building again is abstract in the landscape.
Edward Bawden – Lover’s Lane, near Dunwich, Suffolk, 1948
Edward Bawden – Ash bins, this picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy.
Edward Bawden – An Old Coastguard Station, 1948
Edward Bawden – A Dry Moat, 1948
Richard Scott – Artists at Walberswick, 2002, p101
