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
I thought it would be interesting to list my 50 favourite books. I have no idea what it might say about me other than I read a lot and like escapist literature. It took a week to edit it down and I just picked the ones I could likely quote backwards. They are in no particular order other than most memorable.
1. We – Yevgeny Zamyatin 2. Maidens Trip – Emma Smith 3. A Crisis of Brilliance – David Haycock 4. Evolution in Modern Art – Frank Rutter 5. Alone in Berlin – Hans Fallada 6. Pictures from Persia – Cecil Keeling 7. The Pale Horse – Agatha Christie 8. And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie 9. Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens 10. The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers. 11. Full Tilt – Dervla Murphy 12. Bicycle Diaries – David Byrne 13. The Painted Veil – Somerset Maugham 14. Lost Horizon – James Hilton 15. The Horse and His Boy – C S Lewis 16. Few Eggs and No Oranges – Vere Hodgson 17. The Happy Prince – Oscar Wilde 18. Dreaming of Babylon – Richard Brautigan 19. Empty World – John Christopher 20. The Tripods Trilogy – John Christopher 21. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 22. Witches Abroad – Terry Pratchett 23. Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 24. His Dark Materials Trilogy – Philip Pullman 25. The Tempest – William Shakespeare 26. Vanity Fair – William Thakery 27. Mr Norris Changes Trains – Christopher Isherwood 28. On The Road – Jack Kerouac 29. The Wasteland – T.S. Eliot 30. Naked Lunch – William Burroughs 31. Fatherland – Robert Harris 32. On The Beach – Nevil Shute 33. The Doomed Oasis – Hammond Innes 34. The Story of the Amulet – E. Nesbit 35. The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham 36. The Hound of the Baskervilles – A. Conan Doyle 37. The Temple – Stephen Spender 38. The House at Pooh Corner – A.A. Milne 39. The Hours – Michael Cunningham 40. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 41. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy – J.R.R. Tolkein 42. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 43. The Wench is Dead – Colin Dexter 44. The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 45. Summoned by Bells – John Betjeman 46. A Clergyman’s Daughter – George Orwell 47. The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford 48. Unnatural Death – Dorothy L Sayers 49. Smiley’s People – John le Carre 50. Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
Part of the particular charm of Eric Ravilious’s work is that it is everywhere, I don’t mean on t-towels or mugs, (though regrettably we are at that stage now) it is that his pictures cover scenes that can be found all over Britain. There are many examples where his watercolours could fool you to be a country road you know and pass, until you find it was painted in deepest darkest Sussex and not Northern Essex.
It would surprise no-one then that most of the works he illustrated for London Transport didn’t feature London. The woodcuts made for press adverts and later used on booklets were mostly views from Essex and the village he lived in, Castle Hedingham.
Ravilious and his new wife, the artist and diarist, Tirzah (née Garwood) moved to Bank House in the village in September 1934. It was around the same time that he started an affair with Helen Binyon from 1934-37 – there are a mass of letters between the two to help the writing of this post.
Eric Ravilious – Back Gardens, Castle Hedingham
Green Line Coaches Limited was formed on 9th July 1930 by the London General Omnibus Company, to offer coach services from London to towns up to 30 miles away, comprising 60 vehicles on eight routes. London Transport took the company over in 1933 but kept the name the Green Line.
It was via the Curwen Press that Ravilious was asked to make illustrations for London Transport and the Green Line. They wanted a simple, long, thin wood-engraving. This started a series of wood-engravings that Ravilious would produce for other areas of London Transport.
The order was commissioned on the 20th March 1935. In a letter to Helen Binyon ten days later, Ravilious wrote:
30th March 1935 Green Line Buses would like an advertisement for the Essex scenery – some long narrow engravings, so this job will help to pass the time pleasantly next week. I wish commercial work was all so straightforward so much becomes a compromise between the client’s ideas and what the printer thinks about it and always a hurry for results. These engravings will be fun to do I think. †
Eric Ravilious – Green Line Coach Adverts, 1935
Below is the advert from the original newspaper-sheet, with the news of the day surrounding it. Rather like many adverts of the time there is a quote and a hint at tourism; ‘What hast though to say of Paradise Found?’ and then some information on John
Milton’s home where he completed Paradise Lost.
These remind me of the adverts for Shell Edward Bawden was illustrating at the same time, only these Green Line adverts have a lack of humour in favour of fact. The typography is spot on with dishing out the information, very simple and no fuss. Starting point, times and fares and return journeys, I wish more timetables were like this now.
Eric Ravilious – Advert and wood-engraving in a newspaper, 1935.
Ravilious was very busy at this point in his life, so it will surprise no-one that he was a great re-cycler of his own work, woodcuts for paid trade work became watercolours for his own exhibitions.
Time would also effect the travelling he could do, so other examples of Ravilious using his local area can be seen by the multi-named Hull’s Mill – Hovis Mill – Maplestead Mill, found in the next village to Castle Hedingham, Sible Hedingham. He would use the building from every angle for a variety of adverts for London Transport from 1935-36.
Eric Ravilious – Hull’s Mill, 1935
In Ravilious’s time the building was known locally as Hull’s Mill but in 1917 it was bought by Hovis who ran it til 1957 and sold it in 1959. Recently, although always considered a part of Sible Hedingham the mill is over the parish line on the Great Maplestead side of the river and is known as Maplestead Mill, located next to Hull’s Farm.
Mechanically it was driven by a water wheel, then after the First World War it was converted to be powered by a turbine and a gas engine and the water mill removed. With the water wheel removed in the painting above you can see the exhaust stack for the turbine and gas apparatus.
Emilie Montgomery Gardner – Hull’s Mill, 1952
Below is the design for the print that Ravilious made of Hull’s Mill, annoying (especially if you are trying to research this) this block is named Hovis Mill, maybe to differentiate it from the watercolour above. It is a larger woodblock for Ravilious and this maybe why he engraved the mill in triptych style. In a letter to Helen Binyon Eric notes:
8 November 1935 …The block is much too big. It is one I happened to have so feel I should use it all. †
Eric Ravilious – Design in Pencil for Hovis Mill, 1935
In another letter to Helen Binyon Ravilious writes:
The Mill drawings are going fairly well and may finish themselves one day. It is an extraordinarily attractive place – a bit like this. †
Ravilious illustrated this letter to Binyon and a drawing of the mill and last part of the letter are pictured below.
Eric Ravilious – Design on part of a letter to Helen Binyon, 1935
When living at Brick House with Edward and Charlotte Bawden, Tirzah’s uncle made Eric and her a canoe, it maybe why Eric put one in the Hovis woodcut below. The Paddle can be see in the painting The Attic Bedroom, Brick House. The river behind Hull’s Mill is also one of the widest parts of river in the area, being cut wider from when the Mill had a water wheel, and still is free from weeds.
Eric Ravilious – The Attic Bedroom, Brick House, 1934
Eric Ravilious – Hovis Mill, 1935
A set of views of the Mill today, 2018
Ravilious would go on to cut the mill in another block using the same design again, this time without the canoe as in the Hovis wood-engraving, but with the horse grazing in the field like the above letter to Binyon. In this wood-engraving this time called Pony by a Mill. Below is the study for his wood-block design, squared off and ready for engraving.
Eric Ravilious – Drawing for Pony by a Mill wood-block, 1936
Eric Ravilious – Two Cows / Pony by a Mill, 1936
Cover for Country Walks, 2nd Series with a Ravilious Design of Pony by a Mill.
Above is the print Pony by a Mill with the edges chamfered off in use on one of the London Transport booklets, originally printed in 1936. The 3rd series would also feature the Two Cows wood engraving below.
The Country Walk books were by Charles White and printed for London Transport to show people the possibilities of using the train and bus network. Inside they had maps and planned walks showing how to get to the locations and the sights one might see.
Eric Ravilious – Two Cows / Pony by a Mill, 1936
The two images were engraved on the same block of wood and printed together as one proof. On the left a cow and a bull in a field, separated by a stone wall.
Below is the original drawing on tracing paper for Two Cows, reversed in design as a woodblock always prints backwards.
Eric Ravilious – Two Cows, preliminary study for a woodcut, 1936
The pencil design and wood-engraving again would be re-cycled into another watercolour, Two Cows. Here keeping the study of a cow in the same pose, now doubled in pose, but this time with the perspective of a barn door to fix the eyes attention.
Eric Ravilious – Two Cows, 1936, The Fry Gallery
1936 cover to Country Walks, 3rd Series with a Ravilious Design of Two Cows.
Eric Ravilious – Vicarage in Winter, 1935
Another work with the creativity sparked in Castle Hedingham is the Vicarage in Winter started in the Winter of 1935. Tirzah writes in her diary that Eric’s paint had frozen on the brush and some days later Eric wrote to Helen Binyon:
The snow picture is finished and not bad – rather pretty but so was the thing, like a Christmas card. ‡
This water colour takes us back to the Green Line illustrations and in 1936 Ravilious used the cottage to the right in Vicarage in Winter for one of his wood-engravings for London Transport. According to Barry Kitts:
Ravilious has transformed the slates on the Essex cottage – into thatch. †
The woman cutting the hedge with the path leading up to a V shaped Sussex style stile are pictured – but it is the wall and hedge in Vicarage in Winter that bind them together as the same location.
Eric Ravilious – Cutting The Hedge, 1936
The V Stile also appeared in the Kynoch Press Notebook for 1933. The the stile is on the page for the 8th May but its technical name is Block 121. The Notebook has 42 engraved vignettes of rural life.
Eric Ravilious – Kynoch Press Block 121, 1932
Below is the press advert, the text in the advert talks of the clean breeze of the downs and how you can see Lions at Whipsnade Zoo.
Eric Ravilious – Cutting The Hedge as part of a Green Line Advert, 1936
Another design is the Suburban Home with the man in top hat and umbrella standing in the doorway, much like the men are in the watercolour of Hull’s Mill.
Eric Ravilious – Suburban Home, 1936
The house turns out to be the Old Vicarage in Castle Hedingham, the same in Vicarage in Winter, 1935. The steps, the ionic colonnaded door and the window above all say so – it isn’t a fact I have seen in print before. Below is the engraving in the advert as it would appear in the press.
The Old Vicarage in Castle Hedingham as it is now.
Eric Ravilious – Suburban Home as part of a Newspaper advert, 1936
With the Two Swans as others, a watercolour followed like the Two Cows watercolour, though the figures are similar, they have no relation to the backgrounds of each other.
Eric Ravilious – Two Swans, 1936
Eric Ravilious – Two Swans, 1936
The Shepard is one of the most lively engravings that Ravilious made for London Transport. The Sheep and their ears with the hillside up to the house are pleasing. The technicality of the halftone shading are some of his best.
Eric Ravilious – The Shepherd, 1936
Eric Ravilious – The Shepard as part of a Green Line Advert, 1936
Eric Ravilious – Tea in the Garden, 1936
The last stop on these London Underground travels is of Tea in the Garden. It is a rather abstract design but it was the start of the commuter lifestyle as London was building a new wave of suburbia and you can imagine the print being used with slogans like “home in time for tea” or “enjoy the garden, 20 mins from the city by bus”.
Eric Ravilious – Sketch for Tea in the Garden, 1936
Eric Ravilious – Tea in the Garden as part of a Green Line Advert, 1936
Soon after Ravilious reused the design for a commission with Wedgwood, he was so busy during this point that many designs were recycled from wood engravings to watercolours or china. Below you can see a sketch drawing for a teapot design using the woodblock above. Carving out the legs of the bench and inverting the colours of the table so when printed the transfer will be black and an enamel colour wash painted over.
Eric Ravilious – Sketched idea for Teapot design, 1938
The finished design below, with the colouring in yellow, blue and green. The design has been made simpler and the shading is able to be more subtle as it will be printed on a metal plate, so there is more detail in the halftone lines. It was first used on a preserve jar for Wedgwood.
Eric Ravilious – Printed and Enamelled design from Wedgwood, 1938
The preserve jar was introduced six months in advance of the rest of the pattern. The design was advertised in 1939 as being available also in breakfast and coffee sets; the war prevented production of these. At first unnamed, later called ‘Teaset’, the design was finally named ‘Afternoon Tea’.
Eric Ravilious – The Final Jampot by Wedgwood using Ravilious’s Design, 1938
† Ravilious – Engravings by Jeremy Greenwood, Wood Lea Press, 2008. Ravilious & Wedgwood by Robert Harling, 1995. Away We Go by Oliver Green and Alan Powers, 2006 Eric Ravilious: Memoir of an Artist by Helen Binyon, 1983
‡ Ravilious: The Watercolours by James Russell, 2015
