Here is an interesting artical from Ceramics Monthly, April, 1967 about traditional flower pots for American graveyards.
We had often heard the older potters in our area refer to the graveyard pots and markers their ancestors made, but though we had searched many old cemeteries in North and South Carolina, we could not find any surviving examples of this unique American tradition. When a neighbour told us recently that there were several graveyard pots in the older section of the cemetery where her family is buried, we dropped all work and drove to the graveyard.
It was one that we had visited before, but the pots had eluded us so well as several generation of passers by because the old section of the cemetery, some distance from the new, was quite grown- up in weeds and shrubs.
There, adorning forgotten graves dating from the 1830s to 1900, were more than thirty fine examples of traditional graveyard pots. None of these had escaped the ravages of time, for they were cracked and chipped, and some were badly broken. But the presence of hundreds of shards was a mute testament to the number of pots that once were there.
The urns, vases, and flower pots which had survived, however, were whole enough to have preserved their simple form and beauty. This section of South Carolina is rich in potting legend, but few examples by the dozen or more potters who kept shop up until the early 1900s have survived.
The fields are covered with shards, but only a few churns and pitchers remain to tell of the work of such men as Brown, Fullbright, Clayton, Belcher. Atkins. Williams, Van Patton and Johnson, all of whom had potteries within a ten-mile radius. Their community was called “Jugtown” (not to be confused with the well- known Jugtown, North Carolina). There is no way to tell now which of these potters made the surviving graveyard pots, for it was never the custom for the potters to sign their work, but the pots do represent the skills of at least a half-dozen different potters.
Only one badly-damaged grave marker (illustrated) has survived, but old-timers in the area remember when they were many. It was reportedly the custom for potters’ own graves, and those of their families, to be distinguished by such markers. These graveyard pots are a testament to the ability and imagination of nineteenth century American potters. The same potters who took extra time to make the painstaking decoration on these graveyard pots were content to make perfectly plain vessels for everyday use. The pots were often the only adornment for graves marked with a fieldstone or crudely-lettered tombstone. Since it was the custom, until recent years, for rural churches and families to take constant interest in the appearance of their graveyards, it is probable that the vases were often filled with fresh flowers.
Fred Mizen was born in an Essex village, Great Samford in 1893. Little is known of his early life but it is known that he worked the various farms around the area of Great Bardfield, where he lived and died. It is said that he had been making corn dollies and other straw works since his childhood, where he had seen them made in the fields by other farm workers.
It is known that he served his country in World War One where he lost his left eye and a finger from his left hand. On his return he went gardening for people in the village and surrounding area, no doubt unable to continue with the rigours of farm labouring.
He continued making and selling his works during this time. Personal recollections from a number of people attest to this. In the 1940s, a Muriel Rose (The Little Gallery) was to have another corn dolly maker, a Sid Boatman, make a corn dolly to send to New Zealand for an exhibition of English rural crafts. When Fred heard of this, he took the sheaf of wheat and the next day the dolly was done, Muriel getting a lesson in the craft in the process.
Mizen’s work was also featured and promoted by proxy, in Life in an English Village, 1949, the King Penguin Book illustrated by Edward Bawden, where Mizens corn dollies where shown together in a black and white illustration and also referenced by Thomas Hennell in country crafts.
Edward Bawden – Corn Dollies from Life in an English Village, 1949
Mizen was also depicted in one of the illustrations from Life in an English Village with Aldridge in the Crown Pub, above him is the Corn dolly bell he made that is also illustrated above too.
John Aldridge, Sergeant Baker, the Landlord and Fred Mizen from Life in an English Village, 1949
The pieces that really brought him to the public eye were the Lion and Unicorn for the Pavilion of the same name at the South Bank site for the Festival of Britain 1951. The commision came in during 1950 and part of the publicity machine for the Festival of Britain, Pathe News made a film of his corn dollie work.
These magnificent beasts Mizen created stood seven feet tall. At the time Fred was gardening for John Aldridge, an artist in Great Bardfield. How the Lion and Unicorn came about is a little unclear, but it is highly likely that Aldridge and Edward Bawden were involved, both artists with many guests whom had his work in their homes.
Fred Mizen’s corn-dolly lion and unicorn, in R.D. Russell’s and Robert Goodden’s Lion and Unicorn Pavilion at the Festival of Britain.
The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the crown,
The lion beat the Unicorn all around the town.
Some gave them white bread, and some gave them brown,
Some gave them plum cake and sent them out of town.
They took six months to build and were varnished on completion. After the Festival had closed the Lion and Unicorn were sold to Selfridges in Oxford Street where they were displayed in the shop window before being put in the basement where mice ate them.
The publicity that resulted from the Festival led to something of a revival in interest in Straw plaiting, and a Bond Street retailer asked Fred to make some corn dollies for their Christmas stock. He worked hard and delivered his stock by hand. On being told that a cheque would be sent in due course, he took up the dollies and went into the street, selling them all to shoppers going about their Christmas shopping within half an hour.
Mizen also made a Barley Queen and the Malting Maid, commissioned by Lord Gretton, for the Brewers Society and after were used at Agricultural shows. It is likely John Aldridge painted their faces.
John Aldridge and Fred Mizen – Barley Queen and the Malting Maid
Some of his works can be seen in the Museum of Rural Life in Berkshire. These include an anchor, some 42 inches high, horseshoes, pitch forks, scythes and fire irons. The farm implements are life size.
Fred Mizen continued making straw works until his death on 19th October 1961. His legacy is the renewed interest in the craft and since then, many people have taken to teaching and writing about it.
Photo of Lehmann painting a mural at the Wardens’ Club, St Pancras ARP headquarters in London, 21st August 1940.
Born in Catemu, Chile, to a father of German and French descent (born in Paris) and a Scottish mother, Olga Lehmann was educated at Santiago College, Santiago, and in 1929 moved to England, where she was awarded a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art, London University.
Olga Lehmann – Figure Painting, Slade School First Prize (Equal), 1931
At the Slade she studied fine art under the tutelage of Henry Tonks and Randolph Schwabe, specializing in theatrical design under Vladimir Polunin and in portraiture under Allan Gwynne-Jones. Awarded prizes in life painting, composition, and theatrical design, she visited Spain in the early thirties; Spanish and Moorish themes were subsequently reflected in her art.
Her productive working life as an artist spanned almost six decades, from the 1930s to the 1980s. Throughout the 1930s she acquired a reputation in the fields of mural painting and portraiture.
She exhibited her work at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1933, and with the London Group in 1935. Later sitters of note consisted of people associated with the film or record industries such as singers Edric Connor, Carmen Prietto, conductor Richard Austin, and actors Dirk Bogarde and Patrice Wymore. During the Blitz in 1940, her studio-flat in Hampstead was destroyed by a bomb, and much of her early work was lost. She worked as an artist throughout the war, painting murals in canteens and offices.
Olga Lehmann – Mural design for the Canteen in the Censorship Division.
After World War II, her name chiefly became associated with graphic design for the Radio Times, and designing for the film and television industries. She was nominated for several Emmys for her costume designs.
Olga Lehmann – Design for Ivanhoe, 1981
1977: Lehmann received an Emmy nomination for outstanding costume design on The Man in the Iron Mask.
1978: Lehmann received an Emmy nomination for outstanding costume design on The Four Feathers.
1981: Lehmann received an Emmy nomination for outstanding costume design on A Tale of Two Cities. Lehmann designed costumes for Rosemont’s television films Ivanhoe and Witness for the Prosecution.
1984: Lehmann received an Emmy nomination for outstanding costume design on The Master of Ballantrae.
She also worked as an illustrator of many record covers including the famous BBC recording of Under Milk-Wood by Dylan Thomas. Her stage and set designs are some of her most collectable paintings.
Olga Lehmann – Cover for Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
In 1939 she married author and editor Edward Richard Carl Huson, by whom she had one son, author and television writer and producer Paul Huson. She was predeceased by her husband in 1984, and she moved to Saffron Walden into one of the ‘Artisans Dwellings’, a row of houses designed for artists and weavers of the town. Because of her history and that she lived for some time in Saffron Walden, Lehmann’s work can be found in the Fry Art Gallery.
Stanley Clifford Smith at home in Great Bardfield in the 50s
It is a sad fact that histories are penned by the winners, or the people left to write it. In the case of the Great Bardfield artists that history was left to Olive Cook. When the Fry Art Gallery was set up in 1986 she wrote the history of the local artists and for about 10 years that version of the truth was printed and reprinted. It has now thankfully been corrected now but with more time on my hands I went back to the original copies of their visitors guides and found she had erased Stanley Clifford-Smith totally. It might have been due to the Fry Art Gallery not owning any of his work at the time they opened. But history can be uncovered and re-penned (and as I mentioned, has been). This happened to some lengths when Stanley’s son, Silas Clifford-Smith wrote ‘Under moon-light’ a biography his of father and his mother Joan Glass.
Joan Glass – The Reflected Gardener
Stanley Clifford-Smith, known mostly as Clifford, was three years younger than Bawden and had four children by the time he moved to Great Bardfield. When young, Clifford was partly raised and schooled in Paris as his father was working there. As a child he had seen Debussy perform Clair de Lune and the composer came to their home for dinner. He had served in the Navy during the war as a navigation officer and lived in various properties in East Anglia, focusing on painting and designing textiles with his wife. Joan Clifford-Smith (née Glass) worked under her maiden name. She had studied at Chelsea Polytechnic under Graham Sutherland and one of the life models was Quentin Crisp. At Chelsea she started designing textiles and selling designs to carpet manufacturers. During the war she joined the Wrens and worked in the BBC Canteen.
Joan and Stanley married in Newmarket in 1946, and in 1952 they moved to Buck House, Great Bardfield and later the Old Bakery opposite Edward Bawden’s Brick House. Unlike the artists in St Ives that tended to influence each other, these Essex artists all had different styles and influences. John Aldridge being a traditional painter, Bawden more comic and print based, Rothenstein taking abstraction to it’s limits and becoming more like Britains Picasso, and then George Chapman who’s modernist welsh pictures looked rather alien in the East of England and also favoured etchings. Clifford was the most experimental painter of the village (Rothenstein being the most experimental printmaker) and his style was inspired by French painters and Expressionism, but like all the artists, translated it into his style.
Stanley Clifford-Smith – Clair de la lune, 1965
This small Essex village in the 1950s and 60s became a refuge for artists who had moved out of London when looking to start a family, but where still working in the city, mostly as art teachers and found it easy to commute back and forth. Having so many artists in a small location, the village applied for a money to have an art exhibition as part of the 1951 Festival of Britain arts grant. They got the money, had the exhibition and found it to be so successful that they wanted to do one again in 1954, and these became known as the Great Bardfield Open House exhibitions. Other Open house exhibitions were in 1954, 1955 and a touring exhibition was in 1957 and 1958.
Stanley Clifford-Smith – Harbour and Figures, 1956
It was Stanley Clifford-Smith who helped set up these open-house days in Great Bardfield and exhibited with the other artists of the village. They would turn their houses into art galleries and thousands of people came into their homes to view the work.
In the 1960s the artists with larger families all started to move away from Great Bardfield and Clifford Smith moved to London. By the 70s very few artists were left and John Aldridge was the only artist to stay until his death in 1983.
Stanley Clifford-Smith – Woman Bewitched by the Moon
Here are some recent photographs of Bridge End Gardens that are just behind the Fry Art Gallery.
The legacy of the Livermore sisters lives on in their rather beautiful gravestones in Barnston, Essex. They were painted by Kenneth Rowntree for the Recording Britain and being interested in typography I find them interesting. In 1941 Kenneth Rowntree had also moved to Great Bardfield, settling with his wife Diana (née Buckley) into the “a handsome draughty house” Town House. The sisters histories were rather sad however.
Kenneth Rowntree – The Livermore Tombs, Barnston, Essex, 1940
The Livermores were a large nineteenth century family who lived at the Hall in Barnston. Each grave has a poem but I am not sure were, my guess based on the tone is that they are poetic themes inspired by the Book of Common Prayer.
Martha 14 years old (d 1827) A slow decline
My life was like an April sky
Changing at each fleeting hour
A slow decline taught me to rely
And rest my hope in my Creators power
Emma 22 years old (d 1840) Thrown from her horse
Our life is but a single thread
Which soon is cut and we are dead
Then boast not reader of thy might
Alive and well at noon and dead at night
Jane 19 years old (d 1841) Heart attack
The rising morning ca’nt assure
That we shall end the day
For Death stands ready at the door
To take our lives away
Maria 16 years old (d 1841) Smallpox
Put not your trust in strength or youth
But trust in Heaven whose gifts they are
And now the solemn voice of truth
Hear, and to meet thine God prepare
Barnston Hall, Essex.