ARTS
Crafts
Perfect on paper
Do geniuses get overlooked in the art world? No, argues Alan Bowness in a recent Walter Neurath lecture. He believes that there is a whole series of mechanisms, starting with peer approval, which make it unlikely that there is a great unknown painting away quietly in Cricklewood. But as the former director of the Tate Gallery, and therefore as the voice of the art establishment, he would say that, wouldn't he? Artists do get overlooked or slip from view. And if they are women their careers may follow a less predictable course, their body of work may be smaller or less actively promoted. Of course a woman designer is even less likely, to be well known. Until relatively recently the desig- ner, with few exceptions, tended to be a virtually anonymous figure.
All this is to introduce Peggy Angus, a not at all anonymous, Romany-speaking, fiery Scot, 86 this year, with a particular genius for the design of flat pattern. It is possible to make bold claims for her. When we look at her designs, used for tiles, wallpapers and printed fabrics, we really have to go back to William Morris before
we find anything quite so fresh and full of certainty. (good pattern has to be full of certainty). But because she has lived through a period in which the language of ornament has been either disregarded or has taken timid revivalist forms, she is not much known outside an admiring circle of fellow artists.
Peggy Angus is a radical spirit whose political ideals were formed in the 1930s. She continues to believe that art should have some kind of social responsibility, scorning what she calls 'scribbling to let off steam' and the kind of art only critics can , understand. Above all she believes in what she calls creative patronage, arguing that all the great art of the past was the result of a collaborative process and that all patrons — the state, architects or private indi- viduals — should play an active part in the commissioning process. Her own first crea- tive patron was an architect — the disting- uished modernist F.R.S. Yorke.
Yorke saw some patterns which Peggy Angus had been making just after the war with her pupils at North London Collegi- ate. Though they were humble potato cuts Wallpaper by Peggy Angus: 'any colour you like, as long as it's red' he realised that they could be used architecturally. She had not seen herself as a designer till then. She was a painter, determined to let nothing, especially teaching, stand in her way. She had trained in the illustration school at the Royal College of Art where her friends and contemporaries were Helen Binyon, Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden. Through- out the Thirties she played an active part in the Artists' International Association this was appropriate enough, because her painting was firmly rooted in reality and occasionally sharply satirical. The Spanish Civil War, the Depression and her interest in groups who lived at the margins of society (like the gypsies she knew and drew near Barnet) made her a political commen- tator.
But though she is a workmanlike painter — her landscapes have a strong feeling for the genius of the place and her portraits are sharply observed — her unique gift is for pattern design and we should be grateful to F.R.S. Yorke for discovering this. Thanks to him she became a 'designer for indus- try', with her first patterns silk-screened on to tiles by Carter's of Poole and used by Yorke, Rosenberg & Mardall and many other architects. Her tiles did much to humanise and give colour to the somewhat cold, unadorned interiors and exteriors of these quintessentially 1950s buildings, in particular the schools and colleges being put up by post-war education authorities.
But despite her great success as a desig- ner of tiles, she was always a little dissatis- fied with the results. She did not have complete control of the colours and the finish. When in the late Fifties the painter Kenneth Rowntree suggested she adapt some of her designs for wallpapers for his house, she chose to print the papers entirely by hand — simply painting lining paper with a background colour in emul- sion paint and overprinting the second colour with a small lino block. This time- consuming method means that the hand of the artist is ever present and the variations in printing pressure give the paper an extraordinary living quality. Once seen, machine prints will cease to satisfy. One thing is particularly pleasing. Unlike most papers (even the lovely Bardfield papers made by John Aldridge and Edward Baw- den in the late Thirties), her wallpapers form an ideal background for pictures. In that way they resemble the silk damasks which have traditionally been regarded as the ideal wall material for picture galleries.
Over the years Peggy Angus has in- vented an extraordinary variety of designs. In keeping with her creative patronage ideals she has often cut designs to suit an individual client dragons for Welshmen, harts for Hertfordshire schools. She does this less nowadays but, with an unlimited range of colours to choose from, anyone ordering wallpaper has to do some hard creative thinking. She will advise — 'any colour you like as long as it's red'. She is inspired by all kinds of sources, from the geometric framing of 15th-century frescoes to details from mediaeval manuscripts, to Elizabethan damasks, to the Polish paper cut-outs which she collects. Some of her patterns are boldly abstract whilst others interweave leaves, birds, heraldic-looking dogs, stylised suns and winds and grapes on vines. The mood varies from the pastoral to the hieratic and primitive. Her designs are rooted both in the natural world and in the visual art of these islands — from Celtic pattern to heraldry, to the popular art of bargees and gypsies.
For information about Peggy Angus's pap- ers write to Angus Designs, 4 Camden Studios, Camden Street, London NW1. A selection of her work can be seen in The Decorative Beast at the Crafts Council, 12 Waterloo Place, SW1 till 30 December.
Previous page
