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Edward Bawden, his Wallpaper and Brick House Designs.

 

There was a time when the art of Edward Bawden was, in its own quiet way, ubiquitous throughout Britain. Trained as a designer and a commercial artist, one of Bawden’s notable achievements was to reach a far greater audience than many of his contemporaries. From the posters he designed for the London Underground to the Fortnum and Mason catalogue, from his countless book illustrations to giant billboards promoting some of the most popular British films of the day; Bawden’s distinctive hand was unmistakable.

 

Everywhere his neat economy of line and sharply funny observation traced the passage of everyday life in twentieth century Britain for over three decades.

His was a popular art that reflected its time and its fashions; a time of mass production and mass consumption, affordable and often disposable: The art of print. There is no better expression of this than in his designs for wallpaper where his genius for pattern and discerning eye were given free reign.

 

Wallpaper provided the means by which Bawden’s innate linear sensibility could escape the confines of the book cover or the frame and achieve a human scale; jumping from the page, as it were, and into three dimensions: Literally surrounding the viewer with his whimsical geometry, not in the gallery but in the intimate environment of the home. Nowhere, with the possible exception of his posters and murals, was he able to be so popularly appealing and make such a large visual impact, yet still retain his humorous eye for detail and keen sense of overall harmony, impossible within the confines of the page.

 

This is perhaps best illustrated in Bawden’s own home, Brick House in Great Bardfield, where until 1970 he lived comfortably with his wife and their cats amongst wallpaper, textiles and pictures of his own design as well as many works by fellow artists and designers. The effect of this lyrical domestic modernism (idiosyncratically owing as much to themore oddball Victorian tastes as it does to cubism) is described by Bawden’s biographer Malcolm Yorke who recounts a visit to Great Bardfield by a reporter from the Daily Telegraph in 1956 on the occasion of an open house exhibition held by artists in the village. The reporter apparently ‘ ignored the art but was agog at the interior decoration’.

There she found ‘ all the old brown beams painted white, walls had giant patterned wallpapers, cupboards were painted and not hidden, strong colours were everywhere; there was a pink checked ceiling, blue garden doors’ and ‘a yellow stair carpet with blue balustrade…’

 

The intoxicating combination of an irreverent palette to the revered vernacular tradition is typical of Bawden’s artistic approach and exceptionally well suited to wall coverings. Bawden had in fact already designed wallpaper as a young man for the Curwen press in the 1920’s but only began designing in ernest with the advent of his ‘Bardfield Wallpapers’ which he initiated with fellow artist and neighbour John Aldridge. With the cooperation of the esteemed Cole and son they prepared designs in the form of linocuts that were then transferred onto blocks in the London factory. This promising collaboration was unfortunately cut short by the advent of the second world war.

So, in some ways the new range of wallpapers and fabrics from Brick House Design, the brainchild of the Bawden’s grandson Tom Russell with the creative partnership of Simon Green and Debbie Jeffrey, is a continuation of his grandfather’s project. With access to a wealth of Bawden designs, many of which have never been commercially available, Brick house Design is able to present a unique selection of papers and fabrics of exceptional quality and impeccable design sourced directly from the archive of one of Britain's most talented twentieth century artists. The secret behind Bawden’s genius was his lightness of touch and, as in the patterns in the Brick House range, his designs are always original, never dowdy or slavish to fashion and have a certain timeless quality which they owe to a modern simplicity and a

peculiarly British sensibility.