Tirzah Garwood & Peggy Angus in the ODNB

Tirzah Garwood by Duffy Ayers, 1944

Earlier this year I wrote entries for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography on two remarkable women: Peggy Angus and Tirzah Garwood. The former was born in Chile to ex-patriot Scottish parents, then raised in Muswell Hill, London. She won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in the early 1920s and there met Eric Ravilious, who in turn met Tirzah when, after graduating from the Royal College, he taught her at the Eastbourne School of Art. When Eric and Tirzah were married in 1930 the two women became friends; though very different in many ways, they shared both artistic talent and a belief in plain speaking.

It was fascinating to try and condense the lives of these two immensely creative, characterful people into a few hundred words, especially given that their lives were so closely intertwined. Inevitably an ODNB entry tends to focus on the facts but I hope some hint of character comes through in the newly published essays. For anyone who's interest is piqued there is good news.

In Peggy's case, I would recommend Carolyn Trant's beautiful limited edition biography 'Art for Life', which is based heavily on interviews with Peggy - though after following the link you may want to seek it out in a library! Alternatively you could get hold of the book I wrote to accompany the 2014 exhibition at Towner - 'Peggy Angus: Designer, Teacher, Painter'. I was going to say it's a cheaper option, but people seem to be offering copies at the most terrifying prices. Must be out of print...

With Tirzah the options are rather better, as Persephone Books is about to publish her autobiography 'Long Live Great Bardfield' in a trade edition. This hilarious, insightful and sometimes painfully honest book was edited by Eric and Tirzah's daughter Anne Ullmann, and was originally published as a typically gorgeous limited edition by The Fleece Press. Illustrated with Tirzah's witty wood engravings, the new paperback is a must-read for anyone who has even a passing interest in life and culture in interwar England.

What else? Oh yes. By some quirk of timing, Tirzah is the 60,000th person to have their life recorded in the ODNB. I'm not sure if that makes Peggy the 59,999th, or the 60,001st.

What links... Kenneth Clark, British Folk Art & Peggy Angus?

How's that for Folk Art? Lady Godiva Clock, Coventry, with tile mural by Peggy Angus

Hooray for Tate B. Not just one but TWO inspiring exhibitions on at the same time. I thought a show devoted to an art historian and cultural bigwig might be a bit dry, but far from it. Fascinating to see the work Kenneth Clark collected, all those delicate Cezanne drawings for example, and the pictures he was looking at during his formative years.

Here was a portrait of an art lover whose watchwords seemed to be refinement and modesty - a patron whose genteel good taste and position in the art establishment greatly assisted the careers of Henry Moore, John Piper, Graham Sutherland and other artists of equally rare sensibility.

A bit of a shock, then, to go from the world of 'Civilisation' to the multifarious oddities of British Folk Art, an exhibition which is probably more popular than its debonair rival but which must have been fairly nightmarish to curate. I mean where do you begin? What do you include? The curators seem to have taken a similar approach to Barbara Jones in her wonderful book 'The Unsophisticated Arts', in that they have gathered together work that shares certain characteristics but without trying to define it too closely or to include everything.

Buy the new edition from Little Toller!

Like the book, it's an eclectic, individual survey of figureheads and shop signs, textiles and amateur paintings - a display put together (it seems) by enthusiasts with a good eye for an object, rather than academics with a point to make. In the same way some of the artists championed by Kenneth Clark picked up on interesting or quirky objects or designs. Eric Ravilious loved weathervanes, shop emblems and junk of all kinds - you could put together a mini-folk art show from his prints and paintings. Edward Bawden too.

Eric Ravilious, 'Saddler' from High Street

And his model... white horse outside a Sudbury pub

But many of the most passionate artist-enthusiasts of the 20th century were women, notably Barbara Jones, Margaret Lambert and Enid Marx (authors of 'English Popular Art'), Olive Cook and Peggy Angus. Each no doubt had their own reasons for admiring folk art, but Peggy for one saw in it much more than quirky or original design. She believed that the beautifully decorated Romany caravans she saw in her youth represented the most authentic kind of art - art made not by specialists to be enjoyed by others, but by people for whom it was an integral part of life.

A work of art in itself... check out more wonderful illustrations here

Peggy taught art for more than forty years, gradually developing a curriculum that combined art history and practical training in a bewildering range of disciplines, and which took her pupils from the most primitive art forms, via the medieval and Renaissance periods, to the experiments of Modernism. Throughout she stressed the vital importance of patronage (which had been impressed on her when she visited the Hermitage Museum on a 1932 trip to Soviet Russia).

Great art, she would argue, requires both great artists and great patrons - people with taste, vision and money. At different periods and in different places patronage has been provided by monarchs, aristocrats, religious organisations and the state. Kenneth Clark pushed the British government into state patronage of the arts when he set up the War Artists Advisory Committee in 1939; Piper, Moore and Sutherland prospered.

Peggy's tile mural in the foyer of Lansbury Lawrence School, Poplar

These artists were employed for a purpose - to record the war in their own way (and provide propaganda images into the bargain) - and you could argue that the relationship between patron and artist is always like this. The artist has certain skills, and the patron a use for them. Whether we're talking about an anonymous carpenter creating a figurehead for a naval ship, or a famous painter depicting a bombed cathedral - or, as in Peggy's case, a designer creating a tile mural for a new school - this is the very opposite of 'art for art's sake'. 

Paintings & wallpaper by Mark Hearld, hung Peggy Angus-style at Towner

As far as Peggy Angus was concerned, art needed to serve a purpose. If you come along to the exhibition devoted to her life and work, which begins at Towner, Eastbourne, next weekend, you'll see the extraordinary things she achieved in her lifelong desire to be useful, from her unique art curriculum to tile designs for Heathrow Airport... And look out for hand-printed wallpaper, hung floor to ceiling in the gallery - much of it based on folk art designs. For a preview of what to expect, have a look at Rachel Cooke's feature in The Observer.

And when you've had a good look round her exhibition, head downstairs to Nathaniel Hepburn's elegant show 'Designing the Everyday', which brings together the work of numerous talented artist-designers. There are Ravilious ceramics that seem, on first sight, to be hovering against the wall with no visible means of support, some striking Shell posters, and, to bring us up to date, a room devoted to the talented designers of St Judes. Highlights include chairs upholstered in printed fabrics and Mark Hearld's wallpaper - the latter proof that, twenty years after Peggy's death, her spirit permeates British art and design.

FFI: Peggy Angus: Designer, Teacher, Painter at Towner, Eastbourne, July 12 - Sept 21
'Peggy Angus: Designer Teacher, Painter' by James Russell, Antique Collectors Club.
Designing the Everyday at Towner, until 31 August
Kenneth Clark at Tate Britain, until 10 August
British Folk Art at Tate Britain, until 31 August

Peggy Angus in Selvedge Magazine, July/Aug 2014

The editor of Selvedge kindly allowed me to post this sneak preview of the upcoming issue. To get hold of a copy or find out more, please visit the magazine's website. You should be able to zoom in to the page if you can't read the text.

'Peggy Angus: Designer, Teacher, Painter' is published by Antique Collectors Club this month, and in July the exhibition of the same name opens at Towner, Eastbourne. It should be pretty spectacular!

Tiles of the Alhambra

Just got back from a short holiday in Almunecar, on the Costa Tropical, which included a day trip to beautiful Granada (a name I've associated for forty-something years with gritty northern TV). I don't usually give travel tips, but here's one for the Alhambra, one of the most sought-after European monument-type destinations. You basically have to book ahead, but the online booking is not very easy. If you should find yourself with an imminent visit to Granada and no ticket, go to the Granada tourist information website and buy one of their tourist cards - I think they're called Bono Turistico - which entitles you to several bus trips, free admission to the alarmingly grand cathedral (and other sights) and a visit to the Nasrid Palaces (the masterpiece of Moorish architecture that forms part of the much bigger Alhambra) at a particular time. These are available even when the Alhambra tickets are sold out, but are more expensive.

I know there are pictures of the Nasrid Palaces all over the internet, but the tiles just knocked me out, especially after researching Peggy Angus. She always said that tiles last well, and these have been on the walls for centuries, and have survived invasion, occupation, attempts by Napoleon's troops to blow the buildings up, etc, etc. Lots of info about the Alhambra and its astonishing decoration here.

Some of the tiles seem to be translucent, but they're just painted

The designs are full of life - this one reverses in and out as you look at it

These tiny tiles are set into the floor - I saw them around Almunecar as well, even in our apartment...

The colours are so strong...

Footnote: Granada was the last Moorish outpost in Spain, which fell to the forces of Ferdinand II and Isabella in 1492. More than 300 years later American writer Washington Irving rented part of the palace, where he collected the material for 'Tales of the Alhambra'.

Peggy Angus at the Printers!

From the website of Antique Collectors' Club:

Born in Chile in 1904 (to Scottish parents), Peggy moved as a child to London. A student of the Royal College of Art in the 1920s, her contemporaries included Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Enid Marx and Helen Binyon. 

Peggy travelled extensively throughout her life, she captured places, people and scenes of everyday life with an intuitive perception. The portraits she painted are highly original; the designs she created for the wallpapers and ceramics that furnished her interiors are uniquely styled. 

Following WWII she began producing patterned tiles, adapting the design skills she had taught in the classroom, and up to the 1950s her colourful and decorative tile murals, commissioned by Carters of Poole, were used in a range of newly constructed buildings. Her success in this area prompted her to experiment with wallpaper design, creating a diverse body of work that carries echoes of an artist and designer whom she admired greatly, William Morris. 

Combining biography with a critical analysis of her work, this richly illustrated book aims both to celebrate Peggy's life and remarkable career and to bring it to the attention of a new generation.

'Peggy Angus: Designer, Teacher, Painter' is published by Antique Collectors' Club in June.

Peggy Angus: Old School Tiles

Group of children outside Elliott School, Putney, photo courtesy Andy Lambert & Edmund Hodges (tile panel original to 1956 building, possibly Peggy's but needs further research)

One of the pleasures of researching the life and work of Peggy Angus has been trying to find the many tile murals that she either designed herself in the 1950s, or which were made using the tiles she designed for Carters of Poole. The early years of the Welfare State saw thousands of new schools built around the country. With modern materials and new approaches to design, these schools were light and spacious (compared to the Victorian and Edwardian buildings they were replacing) but, being cheaply and rapidly constructed, they rather lacked individual character.

Technical College, Oxford

Pragmatism ruled post-war, when money and materials were in short supply, yet many schools incorporated artworks or decorative flourishes like the panel shown above. Were these simply visual treats for children and staff, something to alleviate the monotony of the Modernist facade? Or was decoration somehow deemed to be necessary?

This question is discussed in an intriguing new book, 'The Decorated School: Essays on the Visual Culture of Schooling', which is edited by Catherine Burke, Jeremy Howard and Peter Cunningham. The text may be a little dry for the non-academic reader, but it's worth persevering with, and the pictures are great. There are case studies from Japan, France and the United States, and a fascinating discussion of art and architecture in post-war British primary schools.

We hear from 1930s educational pioneer Henry Morris, who argued: 'Buildings that are well-designed and equipped and beautifully decorated will exercise their potent, but unspoken, influence on those who use them from day to day.'

This was certainly a philosophy Peggy Angus agreed with. Influenced as she was by William Morris (who ought to have been related to Henry, but wasn't), Peggy believed that decoration was not a luxurious embellishment but a necessary part of any building. Schools ought to be as beautiful and as visually stimulating as possible, to encourage both the aesthetic and the moral development of students. At North London Collegiate School, where she was head of art through the 1950s and 1960s, Peggy was encouraged by headmistress Dr Kitty Anderson to create (with her students' help) temporary murals and other artworks around the school.

Frank Hooker School, Kent

Post-war, progressive educationalists found themselves in positions of power and influence, and in some cases created a remarkable legacy. In Hertfordshire, John Newsom, CH Aslin and Mary Hoad worked together to ensure that commissioned artworks were integral to new schools. Kenneth Rowntree's eye-catching semi-abstract mural at Barclay School, Stevenage, is one such work that still survives. In west London, meanwhile, architect Erno Goldfinger designed space for a mural into his model primary school, Greenside School.

Lansbury Lawrence School, Poplar (& below)

Peggy's tiles were used all over England and Wales, usually in parts of the school where they would be seen by everybody in the course of the day. Foyers, stairwells and entrances were decorated with panels of different sizes, usually consisting of abstract patterns but occasionally incorporating figurative elements. We'll be showing a couple of the most stunning tile murals, I hope in large-scale photos, at the Towner exhibition in July...

Whitefield School, N London

The Life and Work of Peggy Angus: New Book & Exhibition for Summer 2014

I haven't been posting much lately as I've been immersed in an exciting project. Next July, the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne will be hosting the first major exhibition devoted to the life and work of Peggy Angus since her death in 1993. A few years before that Towner held a show of her paintings and those of illustrious friends like Eric Ravilious, and subsequently there have been exhibitions devoted to aspects of her design work, but this time we're exploring every aspect of a remarkable career.

Peggy Angus, John Piper, 1937 (National Portrait Gallery)

Peggy is not as well known today as she should be. Look her up and you'll find a couple of pictures in theNational Portrait Gallery - including one of her friend John Piper - but otherwise her achievements are rather hidden from the public gaze. Born in 1904, she studied at the Royal College of Art alongside Ravilious, Bawden, Enid Marx and co, but took a while to find her vision. Although she painted some wonderful pictures, her true vocation was as a designer of flat patterns - in the 1950s she created the most wonderful tile murals, which were followed by a whole series of memorable wallpaper designs.

Wallpaper samples

from a private collection

Few of the tile murals survive, while the wallpapers - the best of which also resemble murals - were commissioned for private houses. Ditto the floor tiles she designed, and which were printed, fired and installed by Diana Hall. Over the years Peggy's original patrons have, in many cases, left those houses, and the new owners have not always appreciated their inheritance. So the work is slowly disappearing.

Likewise there remains little trace of Peggy's sixty-year tenure at Furlongs, the cottage near Lewes that is well known today to Ravilious fans. Once it was as vibrantly decorated and as charged with associations as nearby Charleston, but on Peggy's death her family and friends chose not to enshrine her life there. What we have instead are photographs and recollections, which I think is as it should be.

Furlongs

To coincide with the exhibition I'm writing a book about Peggy's career, a companion volume to Carolyn Trant's 2005 epic 'Art for Life' - which I highly recommend. The new title will be, first and foremost, a picture book, bringing together Peggy's paintings, tile designs and wallpapers. While many of the paintings have never been published before, the book includes new photos of surviving tile murals and some wallpapered interiors that will make you want to rush out and start cutting lino. We should have plenty of wallpaper designs to show you, along with archive photos, drawings and other fascinating stuff.

Peggy and Dick Freeman, her landlord at Furlongs

Then there is Peggy herself, the boundlessly energetic and mischievous Scottish patriot and socialist who fought for the right to work part-time, to continue teaching after marriage and to take maternity leave. As a teacher she empowered generations of young women, and the list of people whose lives she in some way touched includes not only Ravilious and his circle but also an array of fascinating figures from across the century: modern architects Serge Chermayeff and FRS Yorke, sculptors Alexander Calder and Alison Britton, ceramicist Philippa Threlfall, illustrator and painter Paul Cox, designer Janet Kennedy, not to mention Carolyn herself - a creator of fabulous artist's books... I'm reliably informed that even Grayson Perry visited Furlongs in his youth.

The exhibition will be held at Towner next summer, while the book is to be published by The Antique Collectors Club.

Artwork and designs of Peggy Angus are copyright of her estate.

Let's Preserve the Last Ravilious Mural!

A glimpse of the past: Mary Adshead mural at Victoria Pier

Vast numbers of murals were painted by British artists between the wars, but few survive today. Indeed, you get the impression that someone like Rex Whistler was unusual in his predilection for this kind of work, whereas it's really the survival of his murals that is extraordinary. The fate of Eric Ravilious's wall paintings is more typical: one set, his most famous, was destroyed by enemy action during World War II; another fell apart as a badly-prepared wall deteriorated; and another disappeared beneath a layer of plaster.

Rex Whistler: mural at Plas Newydd

Rav's friend Peggy Angus (1904-93) also painted numerous murals in the 1930s, with one surviving at the North London Collegiate School. Post-war she created tile murals based on the repetition, with variations, of tiles designed with elegant simplicity, but even these have succumbed to changing tastes and the clumsiness of demolition crews. I spoke to one artistically-minded college employee who had begged such a crew to save one of Peggy's murals when they knocked down the building it was housed in, but to no avail. 'It's gone,' he said to me sadly, 'Like so much else.'

Peggy Angus tiles at Lansbury Lawrence School

Murals that have survived are a source of tremendous joy and pride, as I found when I visited the Lansbury Lawrence School in Poplar; built for the Festival of Britain in 1951, the school came complete with Peggy Angus tiles, which are as vibrant today as they were then; a framed notice draws parents' and children's attention to 'our special tiles'. A similar pride is shown by children and staff at Greenside Primary School in Hammersmith, where a campaign to restore a Gordon Cullen mural has drawn a range of speakers to the Erno Goldfinger-designed school.

The Greenside Mural, by Gordon Cullen

For years it has been rumoured that the murals painted by Ravilious in the Pavilion of Colwyn Bay's magnificent Victoria Pier might have survived beneath layers of paint and plaster, and recent investigations have shown that this is the case. Ravilious had been commissioned by architect Stanley Adshead, whose 1934 Pavilion replaced an earlier structure that had been destroyed by fire; the architect's artist daughter Mary also painted murals in the Pavilion and told Rav's biographer Helen Binyon:

Not a particularly good photo of Rav's Colwyn Bay murals

Eric painted all around the stage with marine subjects, shells, seaweed, etc. I know that my Father was very pleased with his design, he said that Eric had understood what was wanted and had an architectural sensitivity.

The programme accompanying the opening of the Pavilion announced:

Mr. Eric Ravilious strikes an original note in the decoration of the Tea Room. The theme represents a scene on the bed of the ocean. Pink and green seaweeds float through the ruins of a submerged palace. A bright red anchor suggests a connection with the world above.

To restore this delightful vision would apparently cost £65,000, a lot of money perhaps but an investment that would give the seaside town a unique artistic tourist attraction.

Rav & Tirzah at work in Morecambe.

Another lost Ravilious mural is in the process of being not restored but recreated, or sort-of recreated. In 1933 the artist travelled with his wife (and fellow artist) Tirzah to Morecambe, where they decorated the tea room of the brand new Midland Hotel with bright, breezy wall paintings. These succumbed almost immediately to damp in the walls, but eighty years later artist Jonquil Cook is about to paint what she describes as 'a tribute to' the Ravilious murals; she and assistant Isa Clee-Cadman start work on Monday.

In Colwyn Bay, meanwhile, there is a marvellous opportunity to bring a historic artwork back to life. If anyone out there has a few thousand quid to spare and wants to be persuaded that this is a cause worth contributing to, please get in touch. I'll be happy to convince you.

There's a great article on the 1934 Pavilion and its decoration here. For more information on the campaign to restore Victoria Pier visit the campaign website.