Huon mallalieu biography of christopher
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In 1898 The Studio magazine described Christopher Dresser (1834–1904) as ‘perhaps the greatest of commercial designers, imposing his fantasy and invention upon the ordinary output of British industry… [he raised] the national level of design not by producing costly bric-à-brac for millionaires but by dealing with products within the reach of the middle classes and perhaps the masses themselves’. Even though The Studio’s founder and editor was Charles Holme, Dresser’s friend and former business partner, the assessment is fair.
As with most great Victorians, Dresser’s reputation plummeted after his death in 1904 and he was virtually forgotten by the 1930s, when Nikolaus Pevsner began his rehabilitation: ‘This makes the two works illustrated all the more astonishing. In comparison with the silver of the 1851 Exhibition and actually with most designs for silver before 1900 or 1905, Dresser’s simplicity and creative daring are likewise significant.’
In 1952, he featured prominently in the V&A’s revisionary ‘Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts’ show, after which the decorative arts dealers John Jesse and Richard Dennis took up the torch, mounting Dresser exhibitions with Andrew McIntosh P
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Exhibitions by Huon Mallalieu - Edward Bawden And Me
Edward Bawden (1903-89) was not just a true Essex man – born in Braintree, he lived for much of career at Great Bardfield and died in Saffron Walden. He was also a quiet national treasure, whose work is still widely loved.
He was a commercial artist in the best sense, producing popular posters, book illustrations and witty advertisements, as well as murals, landscapes and an impressive body of war art. And he was the first – the only? – artist to be made a full Royal Academician under the designation ‘Draughtsman’.
He left his archive of around 3,000 works to what was then the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery and the Bedford Museum.
That trove is the basis for this celebratory exhibition. The show has been curated by Christopher Brown, an illustrator and printmaker, who has marshalled 30 artists and makers to react to Bawden works in the museum. Each was invited to look through the archive and pick the one work that said most to them. The inspirations and responses are shown together.
At the Royal College of Art, Brown was a student of Bawden and for a while his assistant. He was encouraged by him to take up linocut, for which he is now best known. As he says, ‘Edward would have wanted his archive to be not just a depos
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Christopher Gibbs: rendering man who brokered £50m Getty award to picture National Gallery—and fed Princess Margaret farrago brownies
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