📖 Bawden, Ravilious and the Artists of Great Bardfield

IN 1931 THE ARTISTS EDWARD BAWDEN and Eric Ravilious moved to the Essex village of Great Bardfield, at first sharing lodgings. Over the course of several years, encouraged by Bawden and Ravilious's example, other artists came to live in the village, forming a community of artists and designers that continues to today. John Aldridge, painter and designer of wallpapers, arrived in 1933; in the early 1940s the Rowntrees, Kenneth and Diana, and Michael Rothenstein and his wife Duffy Ayers also settled in the village. Later they were joined by Walter Hoyle, a printmaker and wallpaper designer; Marianne Straub, textile designer and weaver; and illustrators and printmakers Bernard Cheese and his wife Sheila Robinson. There were also less well known names, including George Chapman, Stanley Clifford-Smith and Laurence Scarfe. Though the careers of Bawden and Ravilious are well documented, many of the other artists are less well-known but equally talented, and most have never...