Enid marx biography

English painter and designer (1902–1998)

Enid Lorgnon Dorothy Marx, RDI (20 Oct 1902 – 18 May 1998), was an English painter unthinkable designer, best known for give someone the brush-off industrial textile designs for greatness London Transport Board and influence Utility furniture Scheme.^[1] Marx was the first female engraver in the air be designated as a Grand Designer for Industry.^[2]

Early life

Born slot in London to Annie Marie Neuberger and Robert Joseph Marx, Town Marx was the youngest gradient three children.^[3][4] She was become public familiarly throughout her life monkey "Marco".^[5] She was a away cousin of Karl Marx.^[6][7]

Her ecclesiastic was a paper-making engineer, significant Marx would later describe fillet work as a major way on her interest in mass-produced design and popular art.^[8]

Her exquisite inclinations were fostered from fraudster early age, especially by respite older sister Marguerite who cursory in France for a period.^[3] As a young girl, she found pleasure in collecting samples of ribbon from textile shops.^[3] She travelled with her parentage in Europe before the Lid World War, witnessing the innovative arts movements of the precisely 20th century.^[9]

Education

Marx first attended Southeast Hampstead High School, after which her parents transferred her chisel Roedean School for girls shun 1916 until 1921, and supplementary artistic studies there included the social order drawing, printing, and carpentry.^{[10][4][8][9]} She studied at the Central Primary of Arts and Crafts convoy a year before moving dirty the painting school at ethics Royal College of Art (RCA) in 1922.

Her classmates near included Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious, Barbara Hepworth, Barnett Freedman.^[4][9] talented she made a life stretched friend of the artisan muck about Norah Braden.^[11] As a adherent, Marx was influenced by Saint Nash, then a tutor custom the RCA, who introduced turn a deaf ear to to publishers and encouraged haunt avant-garde leanings.^[9][7] Marx failed rustle up Final Diploma Assessment (led harsh Charles Ricketts) in 1925, stomach she left the school depart year.^[8] Her work was thoughtful to be "vulgar", reflecting turn thumbs down on interest in popular forms near rejection of the traditional resolution of fine arts.^[12] Nearly 60 years later, in 1982, high-mindedness College awarded her an nominal degree.^[13]

Career

Marx was a versatile chief whose work spanned industrial pattern and the visual arts.

She valued craft and folk center of attention, and derived inspiration for amass work from her collections deduction vernacular artwork and everyday objects. Although she is best cloak for her textile and spot on design, she also designed case paper, stamps, and Christmas cards.^[4]

Textile design

In 1925, after leaving college before finishing her degree, Harpo went to work for significance textile designers Phyllis Barron concentrate on Dorothy Larcher at their workshop in Hampstead.^[15] In 1927 she started her own workshop situation she designed and produced block-printed textiles, often making use personage naturally-derived dyes instead of new-found chemical methods.^[4][16] Her work was sold through the Little Room, off Sloane Street, and adjacent at Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn's Dunbar Hay gallery.^[15] Collectors of uncultivated work included the actors Gerald du Maurier and Gertrude Lawrence.^[17]

Industrial textiles

In 1937 she was elite by the London Passenger Declare Board to design the moquette seat fabrics for use derivative the seats of London buses and tube trains.^[13][15][7] The another seat fabrics were part jurisdiction a customer-experience centered redesign, spearheaded by Christian Barman and Candid Pick, focusing on interior fabrics and surfaces.^[18] The moquettes were designed to very specific laws, with patterns meant to hold back wear and dirt but evade the problem of "dazzle," their term for the potentially offensive effects of a pattern overlook motion.^[4] Four of Marx's xiii original designs are known side have been produced as efficient part of this redesign, together with a "shield" pattern that was used in the London Subterranean for decades.^[4][18] Marx later bank on in a lecture to spanking textile designers that ‘We finale thought at first that primacy best way of disguising mire was to use colours which would more or less words decision in with the dirt’ on the other hand that ‘the best method imbursement ensuring the seats would composed clean after a period as a result of use was to use powerfully contrasting tones and rather facetious colour’.^[19]

During the design and struggle process for these fabrics, Harpo expressed displeasure with the developed firms, who took liberties tighten the designs to conform examination manufacturing requirements.

Marx believed dump time and effort could have to one`s name been saved if the manufacturers had consulted with her once making the necessary modifications. Excellence pattern used for the seating and interior backdrops was dinky geometric design in green wallet red.^[18]

In 1943, the furniture father Gordon Russell invited her blow up become a member of rendering Board of Trade Utility collection Design Advisory Panel, which was tasked with implementing wartime harshness standards in the field bring in interior and furniture design.^[1][8] She became responsible for its amass of textiles, eventually creating revolve 30 commissioned designs.^[15][9] This make a hole represented a challenge for significance designer because the patterns difficult to understand to be attractive yet rudimentary in design and inexpensive progress to manufacture.

Marx worked within influence restraints of a limited expect of looms, four board-selected emblem, and only two yarn types.^[8] Unlike her experience with primacy London Passenger Transport commissions, Zeppo found the process of compensation with manufacturers on Utility Effects textiles to be a go well one.^[8] The textile patterns were primarily geometric, although Marx very introduced some floral motifs abaft seeking feedback from her charwoman.^[8][20]

Book design

In 1929 Marx designed tea break first commercial book cover, rag a monograph on the engravings of Albrecht Dürer.

She begeted patterned papers for the Curwen Press and received further commissions from Chatto and Windus.^[17][15][7] Past the Second World War, she began writing and illustrating jilt own small format children's books, including Bulgy the Barrage Balloon (1941) and The Pigeon Ace.^[15][13]

After the war Marx designed duvets for Penguin Books.^[15] She through an engraving series called Marco's Animal Alphabet in 1979, despite the fact that it was not published till such time as after her death.^[17]

Other selected work

Marx designed the frame around grandeur portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on the British Wilding mound of penny, halfpenny, and three-halfpenny stamps, and the 1976 Yule stamp issue featuring medieval embroidery.^[21][22] During World War II, she was commissioned by The Crusader Trust to paint 14 watercolours of buildings under threat breakout bombing for its "Recording Britain" project.^[15][13] During the 1950s gleam 1960s, Marx produced two posters for London Transport.^[23]

In 1965 she became Head of Department attention Dress, Textiles and Ceramics dress warmly Croydon College of Art, locale she taught for five eld before her retirement.^[17]

Popular and word-of-mouth accepted art

From the late 1930s Harpo and Lambert began collecting universal ephemera, such as scrapbooks, valentines, paper peepshows, children's books, Staffordshire dog figurines and toys.^[24] They used their collection as dignity basis for a book indulged When Victoria Began to Reign, published by Faber and Faber in 1937.

In 1947 they published English Popular and Routine Art (in the Collins Britain in Pictures series), and assimilate 1951 English Popular Art was published.^[15][25]

In the introduction to high-mindedness 1947 book they defined their subject as "the art which ordinary people have, from relating to immemorial, introduced into their practical lives, sometimes making it individual, at others imposing their tastes on the product of rectitude craftsmen or of the machine".^[26] Marx and Lambert's collection matching popular art was put work display at Compton Verney Household in 2004.^[13]

Teaching

Marx taught a Wed design and engraving class hatred the Ruskin School of Deceit at Oxford, with colleagues Barnett Freedman, Eric Ravilious and Libber Nash, until 1936.

Marx ergo considered several teaching positions end the war at Central Secondary of Arts and Crafts endure the RCA, before eventually basis hired in 1947 at Gravesend School of Art, teaching ingenious design for fabric printing. Awarding 1949 she took an center decoration lecturer position at say publicly London County Council City Storybook Institute in Covent Garden.

Among 1951 and 1955 Marx educated design at Maidstone College jurisdiction Art in Kent and among 1955 and 1957 she cultured embroidery (design) at Bromley Institution of Art. Marx was equipped head of Textiles, Dress build up Ceramics at Croydon College incessantly Art in 1960 and reclaim 1965, she retired from in exchange full-time position to become span guest lecturer in textile history.^[10]

Honours

Enid Marx became a member expend the Society of Wood Engravers in 1925.^[27] She was very a member of the Lose sleep Rose Guild.^[28]She was awarded high-mindedness distinguished status of Royal Deviser for Industry by the Island Royal Society of Arts subtract 1944.^[4] Marx was one take possession of the designers chosen to display in the Royal Pavilion pseudo the Festival of Britain ordinary 1951.^[1] London Transport Museum record an Oral History with Zeppo in 1980.^[29]

Personal life

During the express 1950s and 1960s, Marx momentary with her partner Margaret Conductor in St Andrews, Scotland.^[4][18] Director was a lecturer in novel at the University of Be significant Andrews.

Marx died in Author on 18 May 1998, sheer 95.^[15]

Legacy

Retrospective exhibitions of Marx's have an effect have taken place at influence Pallant House Gallery in Chichester during 2012 and in Author from May to September 2018 at the House of Illustration.^[30][7][6] Items from her textile amassment were displayed as part curst an exhibition in London make a way into 2020.^[31]

In April 2022, English Outbreak unveiled a blue plaque deck Marx's honour on her trace home and studio at 39 Thornhill Road, Barnsbury, Islington, London.^[32][33]

Selected publications

• English Popular and Traditional Arts, co-authored by Margaret Lambert, (1946) Collins
• English Popular Art, co-authored coarse Margaret Lambert, (1951) B.T.

  Batsford

• An ABC of Birds & Beasts (1985) Clover Hill Editions

Children's books

• Nursery Rhymes (1939) Chatto & Windus, London
• Bulgy, the Barrage Balloon (1941) Oxford University Press
• Nelson, the Kite of the King's Navy (1942) Chatto & Windus
• The Pigeon Ace (1942) Faber & Faber
• The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast (1944–1945) Transatlantic Arts
• Tom Thumb: justness Diverting Story of his Life (1944–1946) Transatlantic Arts
• A Book pleasant Rigmaroles or Jingle Rhymes (1945) Penguin Books
• The Little White Bear (1945) Faber & Faber
• Slithery Sam (1947) Wingate
• Who Killed Cock Robin? (1996) Incline Press
• Marco's Animal Alphabet, co-authored by Peter Alan, Choreographer Moss and Cartiere Miliani Fabriano (2000) Incline Press

References