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particular interest in 'folk art' and the cultural relevance of illustration. ... she was a recipient of an AA2A residen
Towner and Manchester School of Art present: Women in Print: print as an agent of change 1920 - 1960 Saturday 13 September 10am – 4.30pm

Illustrating Englishness Desdemona McCannon Several women illustrators whose work I admire- Enid Marx, Barbara Jones and Pearl Binder in particular- also authored books about traditional craftsmanship, folk’ art and culture, which they illustrated themselves. They are works of popular scholarship, highly visual texts, which were produced for the mass market. This talk looks at how illustrated populist nonfiction contributed to discourses of ‘Englishness’ within the period 1920- 1960, and considers the role of publishers and illustrators as ‘cultural agents’. Desdemona McCannon is an illustrator, writer and academic with a particular interest in ‘folk art’ and the cultural relevance of illustration. She is principal editor of the ‘Journal of Illustration’ and has organised several conferences that have been engaged in these subjects- ‘The Function of Folk’ at the Ethnographic Museum in Krakow (2012), and ‘Enid Marx and her Contemporaries’ at Compton Verney (2013) being the most recent. She is a senior Lecturer at Manchester School of Art.

The Marks and Modes of Modernism: Puffin Picture Books (1940-1965) Harriet Cory-Wright This study takes Noel Carrington’s ‘Puffin Picture Books’ as a framework for reflectively examining the self-styled practices of the women printmaker-illustrators who contributed to the content, conception and currents of thought around the books that fed and informed interwar narratives in artistic discourse and practice. The ‘Puffin Picture Books’ behave as indices of the social, economic and historical conditions that shaped them, opening up a direct dialogue between appropriations of ‘popular’ aesthetics, practical applications of postindustrial reproductive processes and alternative modernisms. Harriet Cory-Wright lives and works in London as a researcher and printmaker. In 2013/14 she was a recipient of an AA2A residency position Camberwell College of Arts (UAL), working with lithography to examine historical and social dimensions of interwar artistic practices/communities. Recent written, educational and research-based work includes projects with Camberwell Press, the RCA and the Journal of Illustration.

Perry Colour Books and WWII Women Camoufleurs Natalie Kay-Thatcher Despite rationing and paper shortages, Britain experienced a flurry of inventive children's book publishing during some of its most tumultuous war-torn years. For example: the badly catalogued and sometimes untraceable Perry Colour Books. I first came across a Perry Colour book at Marchpane bookshop, a thin paperback book called Mythical Monsters illustrated by Pauline Baynes. There was barely anything written on it, just a printed colophon on the back: 'this is a Perry Colour Book devised by Powell Perry'. Little is known of Powell except that he was an officer at Farnham Castle and belonged to a family firm that printed children's picture books. He commissioned dozens of artists, including Pauline and Angela Baynes, who came from the Women’s Voluntary Services to work as model makers at Farnham Castle. This talk explores the tremendous publishing effort made by Powell Perry and the women artists at the Camouflage Development Training Centre at Farnham Castle, an effort that has largely gone unnoticed. Natalie Kay-Thatcher is an illustrator, educator and founder of the Jiggling Atoms project, an interdisciplinary science and illustration project based on the collaboration between artists and research physicists. Having spent many years with an obsessive fascination for science and science fiction, her work explores the merging of science and imagination through graphic narrative storytelling. She is an antiquarian bookseller at Marchpane in Cecil Court specialising in rare children's books, and founded the cosmic bookshop Somnium Books in summer 2013. My Mother Sheila Robinson Chloe Cheese An illustrated talk about the evolution of Sheila's work as a printmaker over her lifetime and how her friendship with Edward Bawden, living in Great Bardfield and her role as a lone parent affected that evolution. Chloe Cheese (b.1952), daughter of Sheila Robinson and Bernard Cheese, attended Cambridge Art School and then the RCA. Afterwards working as a freelance illustrator but also exhibiting on a regular basis at the Thumb and Curwen Galleries. Now concentrates on producing small editions of prints which she exhibits with her drawings and paintings. In addition she teaches part-time as an associate lecturer on the Illustration MA at Camberwell and is a trustee for the Curwen Print Study Centre near Cambridge.

Peggy Angus – Art for Life – Designing, Travelling, Teaching Carolyn Trant The Towner understandably focuses on Furlongs and the local girl, but Peggy also lived and did much of her design-work in London, and she travelled widely – Russia, the Middle East and Pakistan, Europe and Indonesia – and this influenced her designing and her ideas. This talk will look at the wide range of Peggy’s activities and interests from politics and the Artists International to ‘Folk Art’ or ‘Magic Art’ as Peggy preferred to call it – now very topical with the new exhibition currently at Tate Britain - and how all this fitted in with her major design-work with English Modernist architects. Carolyn Trant is an artist and makes hand-printed woodcut books which are in public and private collections across Europe and the USA. She was taught by Peggy at North London Collegiate School from the age of 11 and went on to work with her, printing wallpapers in London and at Furlongs. She wrote Peggy’s biography ‘Art for Life – The Story of Peggy Angus’ and has given many talks about different aspects of her work.

Design for Public Spaces Lotte Beatrix This talk will discuss the significance of decorative art made for the public space by women artists in the early 20th century. Examining the contribution of such artists as Peggy Angus, Evelyn Dunbar and Mary Adshead, particularly in regards to their mural designs and these designs' social function, there will be a focus on the left wing politics of ‘the decorative’ using examples to describe the motivation behind these artists mutual appreciation of natural forms and pastoral imagery. Questioning the influence of their social circles and the way in which socialist philosophy translated into their work though the art-culture of art schools, investigating the theories of Royal College tutor William Rothenstein and his interpretation of ‘Art for All’. I will examine the visual culture of schooling and the use of murals as environmental and pedagogical tools. Lotte Beatrix is a London based illustrator who uses traditional drawing and printmaking techniques. She graduated from Kingston University in 2011 with a first class BA Hons in Illustration. As well as a full-time illustrator, she has recently been involved with Illustration Research, presenting papers on The Vernacular culture of Peter Grimes (Ethnographic Museum Krakow, 2012) and The Decorative Arts and the Public Space (Compton Verney, 2013). Lotte is looking to continue her exploration of haptic methodologies and material culture; she will be starting an MA in History of Art at UCL in September as she is hoping to merge theory and practice more closely in her future work.