Once having studied graphic design I find the history of printing and advertising fascinating. There are all sorts of ephemera that I collect, old business cards, shop receipts, tins, and matchboxes. The woodcuts and early lithographic designs are artworks to their own.
Matchbox designs, being on small cheap items, vulnerable to the customer’s whim, often reflected almost uncannily the attitudes of their age, long before these attitudes could be recognised or analysed. †
Matchbox labels first appeared in 1829 and every conceivable idea was used to illustrate them. By the middle of the nineteenth century the collection of these often colourful and decorative little pieces of design had become a European craze. The early labels were printed by letterpress with woodcut designs, but soon chromolithography was also being used. †
These box labels are mostly from the English and Indian collections, but there are hundreds of other examples.
In 1937 Eric Ravilious did something radical for him, he designed a chair. For a watercolour artist to doodle out a design like this, I think was rather brave. The job came as a commision from his friend Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn who ran the shop Dunbar Hay Ltd. Cecilia and Ravilious were pupils at the Royal College of Art at the same time.
Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn, Eric Ravilious and Anthony Betts in the RCA common room.
Design wasn’t unusual for Ravilious, he had done a lot of china designs for Wedgwood and some glassware for Stuart Crystal. However, whenever I have tried to find information on the maker of the chair below I have always hit a wall. The best way was to ask someone on Instagram who collected Kelly’s Guides and other business directories.
Before this the only information to be found in any book or in the V&A archive was that the chair was made by H.Harris.
It might not look to be important but you never know what links come from this information and it could in time help to find out production numbers, if any other designs were made or rejected, any surplus stock and on…
Eric Ravilious Designed Chair as part of a table set sold at Dunbar Hay, 1937
This armchair forms part of a dining suite, the only known furniture designed by Eric Ravilious. He was an artist and illustrator whose paintings included murals for interiors. The chair was commissioned for a new furnishing shop founded by Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn and Athole Hay. Four dining sets with variations were made.
In the 1930s there were still many enemies of the square and sometimes harsh shapes of modernism. Many designers and patrons preferred furniture that had links with the past. This chair is in keeping with the popular Regency revival style of the 1930s. The lines are recognisably those of the English Regency style (about 1810–30), but they are simplified to correspond to 1930s taste. †
The person on Instagram was David Wakefield, a typographer and designer with an amazing collection of books on printmaking and ephemera. It was with his help alone I can tell you now that H. Harris was Hyman Harris.
In 1911, Hyman Harris was recorded at 3 Grimsby Street, Bethnal Green. At that time, advertised as a wood chimney-piece manufacturer with Williamson & Harris at Guy’s Buildings and 85 Kingsland Road.
By 1931, he is H Harris & Sons Ltd, at 18 Gosset Street and 17 & 25 Newling Street, Bethnal Green, still recorded as chimney-piece manufacturer. However, by 1944, or earlier after 1931, he is H Harris & Sons (Furniture) Ltd, Who. cabinet makers, Grimsby Street, E2. ‡
Newling Street, Bethnal Green
The business continued until 1968.
It looks like the Ravilious Chairs were not manufactured beyond a prototype and now belong to the step-sister of John Aldridge. If you want to find out what a cad Cecilia’s husband was, you can read about it here.
I don’t think anyone would be shocked that I buy a lot of books, maybe ten a week. But in my latest purchases I had a copy of the House & Garden’s Book of Interiors, edited by Robert Harling in 1962. One of the small pictures was credited as a bedroom of Place House, Great Bardfield – the home of John Aldridge.
While John was a painter his wife Lucy made rugs. The design for the rug is in the Fry Gallery collection of works as it was painted by John. Lucy also exhibited her rugs at the Great Bardfield Artists Exhibitions but like many of the women who were wives, they got no credit.
John Aldridge – Rug Design, 1939
As sitting hand-knotting a rug takes some time, she made an ideal subject for an oil painting.
John Aldridge – Lucie Weaving A Rug, The Fry Gallery, c1960.
Edward Bawden – Cover illustration for The Twentieth Century, August, 1956
Edward Bawden was bought up in Braintree and after studying at the R.C.A. he moved to Great Bardfield. The nearest station was in Braintree and the terminus for the line was Liverpool Street Station, so as a student at the Royal College of Art or as a teacher there, he would have experienced the station countless times. While being interviewed for the BBC Monitor program Bawden is quoted below:
I don’t think I would have thought of Liverpool Street as a subject, as I am so familiar with it. Almost seems to me an extension of my own house. I think the ceiling is absolutely magnificent, it is one of the wonders of London. †
Bawden would use Liverpool Street Station in many various ways over his life, the first time is this etching done soon after he left the Royal College of Art.
Etchings for artists at this time were used like a romantic ideal of a photograph, very detailed and accurate, but edited. Few artists would use the medium like Bawden did at the time, a handful of exceptions of Christopher Nevinson and William Roberts exist. Bawden however didn’t edition many of the etchings and most of them were left to be forgotten and later reprinted in 1973. The value of Edward Bawden’s etchings is something that should be reviewed as a legacy to the medium.
Another amusing print is Mr. Edward Bawden’s engraving “Liverpool Street”, which is really humorous, not in subject, but in pattern. ‡
Edward Bawden – Liverpool Station, Etching, 1927-29
Below is a drawing used in the Sundour Diary and Notebook, a diary illustrated by Bawden in 1953 with scenes from all over Britain, a simple pen and ink drawing it captures the gothic windows and iron roof top that give the station a cathedral quality.
Edward Bawden – Liverpool Street Station, Drawing, 1953
Bawden, again working in pen and ink, illustrated the cover of the Twentieth Century magazine. He would work for the magazine for three years making covers most of the months with topical themes. This illustration looks like the rush on trains to start the holidays, at the front a father with a child on his shoulders, while carrying two suitcases and followed by a dog. In front of him a luggage trolley collides with a lady.
Edward Bawden – Cover illustration for The Twentieth Century, August, 1956
Bawden was commissioned to make two limited edition prints, one of Liverpool Street Station and one of Kings College, Cambridge, but nothing would come of that. It looks like Bawden trialled making the print in various ways, a lithograph and a linocut. The lithograph below looks almost like a pen doodle with the rooftop being a cobweb and the structure being lost in the detail. The figures on the the picture look like humans made of wire, it’s all very abstract for Bawden.
Edward Bawden – Liverpool Street Station, Artist’s Proof Lithograph, 1960
Edward Bawden – Liverpool Street Station, Linocut, 1960
Above is the final print by Bawden after he settled on a linocut. Below is a study for the linocut as a drawing and with the perspectives bending away to the left. The main structure to the right looking like the final work. The final linocut being flatter and showing off the gothic windows.
Edward Bawden – Liverpool Street Station, Drawing, 1960
Below is a detail from the final print and a look at the repetitive detail and skill in the ironwork, rooftop and train carriages. It also shows off the over-printed steam to the right and the cut out steam to the left. And below that is another detail from the print showing the centre of the print having colour and light.
Edward Bawden – Liverpool Street Station, Linocut (Detail), 1960
Edward Bawden – Liverpool Street Station, Linocut (Detail), 1960
Even thought Bawden didn’t complete a print of Kings College, Cambridge, he did in the same year make a print of Braintree Station and this may have covered the commission. From one station to another, these are the main bench ends of Bawden’s world.
Edward Bawden – Braintree Station, Linocut, 1961
† BBC – Monitor, 10 November 1963 ‡ Apollo Magazine – 1928, p171
To discover a new work or artist is always exciting, but it must be rather perplexing to some people who have lived with artists and their work, and over time find it admired. This happens many times with families accepting works of art on walls, but not enquiring.
A famous example of this is Evelyn Dunbar. She had died in 1960. Her work and her studio was packed up and distributed about the family soon after. In 2013 the wife of Evelyn’s nephew was watching Antiques Roadshow and saw the expert value one of her paintings at £40,000 – £60,000. Members of the family started to look for the works!
They turned out to include more than 500 paintings and drawings by Evelyn. Another nephew had been tracking the contents of Evelyn’s “lost studio”, dismantled after her death, with its contents sold on or given away to family and friends, and compiling a record of her paintings; the find doubled the number of her known works ♥
With the help of a commercial gallery the works were costed at a market price and presented to the public to buy, along with a major retrospective of these new works. A PR Video on Dunbar can be found here.
In the case of Suzanne Cooper, the family knew of the works but sought for recognition for her. They have also reprinted some of her woodblocks for sale. Her family own 14 of her paintings and various woodblocks and the original blocks, 1 painting is in the Auckland Art Gallery in New Zealand, but around 12 works are ‘lost’ and yet to resurface in the market.
Born in 1916, Cooper grew up in Frinton, Essex, the town with the reputation. We know that she was educated at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London under Iain Macnab and Cyril Power.
Based in 33 Warwick Square, Pimlico, London, the Grosvenor School was housed in a mansion built in 1859 by architect George Morgan for James Rannie Swinton, the Scottish portrait painter. In 1924 the house was sold following the divorce of Lady Patricia Ellison (of Louisville, Kentucky) and Sir Charles Ross (of Balnagown).
Iain Macnab married Helen Wingrave, a famous dancer and dance instructress. Macnab used some of the building as teaching rooms for his Grosvenor School and others are living quarters while his wife operated a dance studio and gave private lessons from the ball room.
The Grosvenor School would have been the hippest place to be taught at the time and the printmaking department was having a renascence of modernism with lino and woodcuts. It is clear that Cooper was influenced by Macnab’s style in woodcut.
Suzanne Cooper – Back Gardens
Iain Macnab – Cassis-sur-Mer
During Cooper’s time as a student she exhibited paintings and wood-engravings at the Redfern, Zwemmer, Wertheim and Stafford Galleries, mostly as part of the Society of Women Artists and the
National Society of Painters, Sculptors and Print-Makers, the later being reviewed below in 1938.
I liked the prints of Rachel Roberts, a newcomer to these exhibitions, and also those by Suzanne Cooper, Eric King, Joar Hyde, and John O’Connor. †
Christopher Wood’s patron, Lucy Carrington Wertheim bought one of Coopers paintings Royal Albion, she later donated it to the Auckland Art Gallery in 1948. It was at this time that Cooper was painting in oils and her work mirrored Christopher Woods in tone and composition.
Suzanne Cooper – Royal Albion, 1936
Suzanne Cooper was one of many artists who were taken under the wing of Lucy Carrington Wertheim, who was first encouraged by Frances Hodgkins to set up a modern art gallery. This delightful depiction of the Royal Albion hotel shows a common seaside view, with small boats drawn up on the beach opposite, in the protection of the groynes which can be found on many British beaches. The artist’s use of simplified blocks of form and colour was popular with members of the St Ives school of painters. ‡
The fashionable appeal of the Grosvenor School linocuts did not last long, however. Even before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. ♠
The Second World War came and the Grosvenor School Closed in 1939. Cooper married Michael Franklin in 1940. They had three children, and she produced no more large-scale paintings, though continuing to work in pastels and chalk. She died in 1992.
Suzanne Cooper – The Carol Singers
Suzanne Cooper – Street Scene
Suzanne Cooper – Still Life
Suzanne Cooper – Renwick Coals
Christopher Wood – Drying nets, Treboul Harbour, 1930
† The Scotsman – Tuesday, 08 February, 1938 ‡ Auckland Art Gallery ♠ Lino Cutting and the Grosvenor School of Modern Art – artrepublic ♥ Evelyn Dunbar: the genius in the attic, The Guardian
For those of you who live in the UK, on the BBC last night was the Antiques Roadshow. A lady had bought along a wood engraving found in her husbands-grandmothers attic, a signed wood-engraving by Eric Ravilious. It was being valued by Mark Hill and appears at 7min 50seconds, the link is here (UK Only).
The engraving appears on the back cover of the Golden Cockerel Press Spring Prospectus List for 1930.
Eric Ravilious – Design for Back Cover of the Golden Cockerel Press Spring Prospectus List, 1930
Here are all the covers of The Twentieth Century I own, yet there are many more, but I thought you would enjoy the illustrations, it shows Bawden looking at daily life and would be good for a diary.
It was in 1956 that Bawden was elected to the Royal Academy of Art. It must have happened in February as his credit his credit changed from ARA to RA.
The information that comes into my world and on to this blog comes from either reading it or talking to people. Twice this weekend I have got my notebook out and scribbled down references about people. In the research, links are made and there is a spider’s web of connections until I am surrounded with books like a bird in a nest.
Margaret Bryan’s name appeared on Twitter, who was she and what had she done? Well there isn’t a lot of information out there but what I have amassed so far is this:
Margaret Bryan – The Deluge
Margaret Bryan was born in 1903. A Nottingham artist, most noted for her wood engravings. She was working from the mid-1920s to the late 1930s. After this point it is harder to find out information. During the 20s she appeared a few times in newspaper and magazine reviews of art shows but then it all stops. One can only guess married life and children slowed the pace of her work. In 1929 Margaret lived in Castle Road and was also traced to Lucknow Avenue, Mapperley Park, Nottingham. In 1947 she illustrated Henry Bell’s Children’s Almanac.
Margaret Bryan – After El Creco, 1931
Miss Margaret Bryan’s interpretations of Michelangelo and El Greco are far from incompetent. The Apollo – October, 1931.
The quote above comes from an exhibition where her work was shown beside Blair Hughes-Stanton and Gertrude Hermes. The show is likely to be from the short lived English Wood Engraving Society, a splinter group from the Society of Wood Engravers.; Their aim was to attract artists who were not solely interested in book illustration, but rather, wanted to make wood engravings that were independent of such an illustrative function.
Margaret Bryan – The Fisherman
Below are two pages from A Children’s Almanac, 1947. the simple pen drawings are layered with a simple one colour image overlay.
Margaret Bryan – Autumn, 1947
Margaret Bryan – Summer, 1947
It was another blogger who pointed the link between Bryan and the illustration for The Litter Gallery’s Christmas advert. In my time the illustration below has been attributed to Edward Bawden and Barbara Jones because it is designed with a B but I would say they are correct and it is Margaret Bryan. The Muriel Rose archive also never attribute the artist of the advert so it is in some doubt.
Christmas Advert for The Little Gallery
Bryan also designed the illustrations on the World Favourite Library for Boys and Girls books dust jacket. Her designs were used as a uniform dust jacket, the illustration always being the same but the name of the book printed over it changes. The series was published by Peter Lunn who also published A Children’s Almanac, both in 1947.
Nash – Summer Gypsies, with the uniform jacket by Margaret Bryan, 1947
Eric the copycat Ravilious, as I am starting to think of him, may well have taken delight in how surprised I am that so many of his designs are recycled from other works. Over the ages he might be whispering ‘In front of your face are the clues, now go find them’ but as in my previous blogs, I take delight in such matters.
In 1936, Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn
(later Lady Sempill) and (the Royal College of Art registrar) Athole Hay, set up a shop to promote the works of RCA students in modern interiors, the shop was called Dunbar Hay Ltd.
Josiah Wedgwood and Sons began their work with Ravilious following his introduction to Victor Skellern, the head Art Director at Wedgwood.
In 1934 Skellern was new to the job at Wedgwood and looking to shake the company up, he had also studied at the RCA.
The introduction was instigated by Kilburn who encouraged established companies to take on young designers to make more interesting products for her shop to sell. Ravilious would also be recommended to Stuart Crystal and much later, the British Cotton Trade Board to do work.
Eric Ravilious – Pen and Wash Design for Garden plate series, 1938
The Garden Implements jug designs by Eric Ravilious for Wedgwood in 1939 saw him once again recycling old works. A year before he was designing a series of tableware called Garden for Wedgwood, in one of the many designs is a small barrel, full of tools, just like from the jug. The plate was issued and the barrel of tools used on the plate as well as on the lid for the teapot.
However when the barrel design is alone on the jug it looks like an illustration from a farmers almanac, much more elegant. The other side of the jug has a series of vignette designs. The Garden Implements jug forms part of a lemonade set. The designs and transfers placed on a stock Wedgwood ‘Liverpool Jug’ shape. Production numbers in 1939 are unknown but a limited number of 250 was produced in 1986 to mark the 50th anniversary of his first employment by Wedgwood in 1936. Below I have outlined the memory bubbles Ravilious used in the vignettes of this 1939 design.
The Cat
This design as far as I know is an original drawing for the jug, although two years later when asked to make some designs for the British Cotton Board he re-used the design again, though those designs were never printed commercially.
Eric Ravilious – Design on Paper for a child’s handkerchief, 1941
The Sunflowers The drawing of a Sunflower looks like it could have been a watercolour from the re-drawing of the main flower.
Eric Ravilious – Drawing of a Sunflower, c1935
The Wheelbarrow The Wheelbarrow was used in an earlier commission of some months from Wedgwood. The design of the Garden Implement jug, takes the log laden wheelbarrow and empties it for a simpler design.
Eric Ravilious – Design for Garden dinner service, Wedgwood, 1938
The Jug The Jug of Acanthus leafs, a subject for an earlier painting has been drawn with halftone lines as if it was a wood engraving.
Eric Ravilious – Still Life with Acanthus Leaves, 1938
The Beehive The Beehive wood engraving appears in the Country Life Cookery Book in 1937, Ravilious made 12 engravings for the book, one for each month and Ambrose Heath provided the text. Heath also worked with Edward Bawden on cookery books as well.
Eric Ravilious – June, Wood-engraving for the County Life Cookery Book, 1937
The Fabric
A fabric was made of the jug designs, the commission likely came at the same time as the handkerchief design, pictured above. The commissioner was a young graphic designer (the man who invented the peace sign) working for the British Cotton Board, Gerald Holtom. It was 1941 and Ravilious was now in the War Artists Adversy Scheme, so Holtom went to Eric’s boss, Dickey O’Rourke.
I’ve just had a long visit from a Mr Gerald Holtom who seems very much to want designs for textiles for some Cotton Board. It would make a change to do this for a bit, and he assures me the whole thing is urgent and necessary. Do you know anything of this scheme? I said that it was a good idea which I would do if it were possible. The committee agreed that Eric might in Mr Holtom’s phrase ‘postpone battle at sea for battle in export trade’, and do some experiments in designing textiles †‡
It is as yet unknown by me, if Ravilious intended the Garden Implements design to become a fabric also, but in 1956 the Edinburgh Weavers company did produce a short run of this fabric for commercial sale but how it came about I don’t know. Judging from the amount of recycling of work Ravilious did it wouldn’t surprise me.
The handkerchief above however was designed on paper and with documentation it was for the BCB. In 1989 Alan Powers and his Judd Street Gallery printed a limited run of the handkerchief.
Edinburgh Weavers – Garden Implements design after Eric Ravilious, 1957.
† Alan Powers – Eric Ravilious’s Child’s Handkerchief. 1989
‡ Helen Binyon – Eric Ravilious: Memoir of an Artist, 1983 Jeremy Greenwood – Eric Ravilious Wood Engravings, 2008 Robert Harling – Ravilious & Wedgwood, 1986
While looking into Eric Ravilious’s work for London Transport I noticed how many times a greenhouse would appear in Ravilious’s work.
Eric Ravilious – Kynoch Press Block 112, 1932
There are two curious observations in this post. One is the wood-engraving above, and the one below are the same location; the walled-off greenhouse with decoration on the end of the roof above the glass panes. It is also like the wood-engraving Tea in the Garden, but not quite.
Tirzah, (Ravilious’s wife), was a wonderful wood-engraver and artist in her own right. Below is a man about town in a driving Macintosh laden with marrows, the perfect suburban man.
Tirzah Garwood – The Husband, 1929
Below are two pictures, one, a wood-engraving featured in last week’s post on London Transport, but also a photograph of Tirzah and Eric together at the time of their engagement.
I include it because it’s the second of my observations in this post – the bench they are sitting on is so remarkably similar to the bench in Tea in the Garden that I would say this is the same bench and the inspiration. The back may have curves on the woodcut but I would suggest this is just to make the design more harmonic.
Eric Ravilious – Tea in the Garden, 1936
Tirzah Garwood and Eric Ravilious at the time of their engagement, 1930
Below are a series of beautiful watercolours of greenhouses by Eric Ravilious included because they are so beautiful. It is very hard to walk into any greenhouse and not think of these paintings. They are the skill of perspective but also that skill found in craftsmen, the ability to paint, carve or make a series of objects, in the case of a carpenter it would be stair rods, in Ravilious’s case it is each plant pot and working with the the backdrop of shadow.
Eric Ravilious – The Greenhouse – Cyclamen and Tomatoes, 1935.
Eric Ravilious – Geraniums And Carnations In Greenhouse, 1935
