Enid Marx – Print, Pattern and Popular Art

Fascinating exhibition at the House of Illustration looking at the illustrations and design work of Enid Marx.
 
Marx was at the Royal College of Art with Ravillious, Bawden, Hepworth and Moore but moved into design work in the 1920s. She specialised in abstract repeat patterns and there was wonderful wall of her utility designs from the Second World War. Most famously she designed some of the iconic London Underground fabrics and there was a good display on this talking about how the material has to be patterned so it doesn’t show the dirt.
 
Marx also designed and made hand printed pattern paper for the lining of book covers and there lovely examples of this both in books and as rolls of paper. From 1929 she moved into book illustration as well specialising in covers for Chatto and Windus and later for the King Penguin series and well as producing her won children’s books.   There was a also a nice display on her stamp designs including the Christmas stamp for 1976 based on Opus Anglicanum,  medieval church embroidery.
 
The last room looked at her work with her partner Margaret Lambert, to collect and promote English folk art as an antidote to Modernism. The walls were lined with works from their collection, Marx’s drawings of other pieces and copies of their book “English Popular Art”.
 
Closes on 23 September 2018
 
Review
Evening Standard


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