PhD pottering

Illuminated Addresses, Kingston Heritage Service

In February, Heritage Supervisor Carolynne Cotton got in touch to let me know that the Legal Department at Kingston Council had given Kingston History Centre a set of illuminated addresses. Carolynne thought these might be connected with the Knox Guild and spotted the telltale initials ‘DKT’ for Denise Kate Tuckfield (later Denise Wren). In April I went to take a look to see whether I could identify any more of the artists from the initials on each of the addresses. Kingston Heritage Service kindly allowed me to include the images I took of the addresses here.

These beautiful documents were created in ink on vellum and were made to record addresses written to thank to individuals who had rendered services to Kingston Borough or to welcome elite visitors on ceremonial occasions. In my last blog post, I speculated that Town Clerk Harold Winser, himself a member of the Knox Guild, may have got to know the group through commissioning exactly these items from them. I already knew of one illuminated address created by Denise Tuckfield for Robert Baden Powell in 1913.

This newly discovered set of illuminated addresses date from the decade 1899 to 1909 and I was initially very excited to see the initials ‘DKT’ and ‘WT’ on some of them, which I assumed were respectively ‘Denise Kate Tuckfield’ and ‘Winifred Tuckfield’. However, Denise (b.1891) and Winifred Tuckfield (b.1889) would each only have been aged ten when the earliest of the addresses is signed with their initials, respectively in 1901 and 1899. It is difficult to believe that a ten year old would be capable of such fine work. And it seems that these are original documents, since they are held by Kingston Council. Nevertheless, I wanted to feature them in a blog post as they are so interesting and may have a connection with Kingston School of Art.

Carolynne speculated that perhaps Kingston Council commissioned the addresses through Archibald Knox. I think this is very likely, as Knox became Design Master at the Art School from 1897 and the first address dates from 1899. During classes, Knox got his students to copy the vivid symbols and colours of heraldic devices. He used these as examples to show the students how to build up designs. The Wren Archive held by Kingston Heritage Service has many drawn and painted crests and shields which Denise Tuckfield created during her art school course. One of the few published texts by Knox evidences his interest in this topic. Entitled ‘The Arms of the Earl of Surrey’, it appeared in 1907 in The Well, the Wimbledon School of Art magazine. (1)

Knox also had a longstanding interest in calligraphy and interlaced patterns, inspired by his passion for Celtic design. He travelled to Dublin to see the best examples of Celtic art, such as the illuminated manuscripts of the Book of Kells. Knox developed his own calligraphic alphabet, in which the letter forms were based on a circle, which Denise copied as an exercise. Rosemary Wren, Denise’s daughter, recalls Knox travelling from the Isle of Man to the Oxshott Pottery when she was a child in around 1930. There, he led a workshop for Knox Guild members on lettering and drawing. (2)

Knox went on to produce many works of calligraphy, including an ‘illuminated manuscript of an early Irish hymn traditionally attributed to St. Patrick, The Deer’s Cry made during the First World War. Afterwards, he created ‘another illuminated book commemorating the staff and students of Douglas High School who served in the First World War’, his own former school on the Isle of Man. (3)

As all of the illuminated addresses shown here are a combination of calligraphy, heraldic devices and interlacing, it seems most probable that Knox had some hand in them. However, there is no mention of Denise and Winifred Tuckfield having contact with Knox before they started their art school course. So, were the Tuckfield sisters precociously talented? Or were they copying designs suggested by Knox? Or are the initials misleading? Perhaps answers will come to light at a later date. What follows are details of each of the addresses in chronological order.

The Right Honourable William Court Gully, QC, MP, The Speaker of the House of Commons
26 October 1899
Signed ‘WT’, presumably for Winifred Tuckfield. The front shows a striking design of a hand holding a winged sword and the inside is decorated with stylised flowers.

This address was presented on the occasion of the unveiling of a stained glass window in the Town Hall, paid for by public subscription. It commemorated ‘the granting, about seven centuries ago of the first recorded charter of the liberties of this borough, the grantor being that king from whom a few years later was obtained that great historic charter of our nation’s liberties.’ This is a reference to the Magna Carta of King John, who also granted Kingston’s first charter in 1200. The address points out that 1899 also marks one thousand years since the death of Anglo Saxon King Alfred and the coronation of his son King Edward the Elder. The window was later moved to Kingston Museum where it can still be seen.

The Right Honourable The Earl of Rosebery, KG, KT
17 October 1901
Signed ‘DKT’, presumably for Denise Kate Tuckfield. A magnificent depiction of the coat of arms of the Earl of Rosebery with white lions rampant holding a shield with black lions upon it and the motto ‘Fide et Fiducia’ : ‘In faith and trust’. The lettering closely resembles Knox’s calligraphic alphabet and this design, as well as the one inside, is stylistically very similar to Denise Wren’s later work. Inside, the text is written between two thistles with birds on the wing, forming an unusual and sophisticated design. The thistles are a reminder that the Earl’s title is part of the Peerage of Scotland.

The address was given on the occasion of the Earl of Rosebery’s installation in the historic office of High Steward of the Borough. In October 1904, the Earl officially opened Kingston Museum, venue for many Knox Guild exhibitions.

The Right Reverend Edward Stuart Talbot, D.D., The Lord Bishop of Rochester
17 May, 1902
Signed ‘GB’. The sole member of the Knox Guild with these initials is Annie Begg’s sister, whose first name is not known. Only her initials appear in the Knox Guild catalogues of their three exhibitions at the Whitechapel Gallery in the 1920s, where she is listed as a ‘Guild Raffia Worker’. But the document could equally have been created by an art school student with these same initials. Geometric flowers and foliage surround the calligraphy.

The address commemorates the Bishop of Rochester’s visit to Kingston to unveil the ‘millenary memorial window’ celebrating the occasion of the crowning of the Anglo Saxon King Edward the Elder in Kingston one thousand years previously. This stained glass window was designed by Dr. Finny, seven times Mayor of Kingston. Like the window commemorating Kingston’s first charter, it is now incorporated into Kingston Museum. The address notes that Talbot is the hundredth bishop to hold this post. He went on to become Bishop of Southwark, then Winchester.

His Excellency the Japanese Minister Viscount Hayashi
April 23, 1902
Signed ‘MC’. It is likely that this was Marian Coombes who also made a number of lithographs depicting the local area. She later joined the Knox Guild and there are more details on her in the post about them below. On the front of the document are birds perched on the cross of St. George and inside are birds flying. This stylisation of avian forms was termed ‘Knoxical’ by Denise Wren, as it was adopted from Knox’s way of depicting birds. Denise often used similar shapes, for example on publicity for Knox Guild exhibitions held at Kingston Museum and the Whitechapel Gallery.

This address was made for the visit of Viscount Hayashi to unveil the renovated statue of Queen Anne on the bicentenary of her coronation. Her gilded likeness still looks down on Kingston Marketplace from the centrally located Market House. Hayashi is named inside as the representative of the Emperor of Japan. In 1902 Britain and Japan signed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance as a defence against Russia expanding its influence within Asia. The address references ‘that great nation with whom ours has entered into such friendly relations’. It also cites the fact that Viscount Hayashi had chosen Kingston Borough for his summer residence for the previous two years.

His Serene Highness Prince Alexander of Teck and Princess Alice of Albany
6 February, 1904
Signed ‘DKT’. It is more feasible that Denise Wren could have made this design aged thirteen, and would explain the spelling error in the word ‘approching’. Knox’s favourite decoration, intricate interlacing like that found in Celtic illuminations, is much in evidence here. Denise’s art school work shows that she was a talented draftswoman, who once acknowledged that she was ‘born being able to draw’. (4)

Princess Alice was the last surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria and Alexander of Teck was her second cousin once removed, both being descended from King George III. The address wishes them a happy marriage, explaining that ‘As our borough is near to and mid way between the residences in which (you) respectively passed your earlier lives, the announcement of your marriage has elicited peculiar interest and pleasure amongst us…’ Its further declaration that ‘It is our fervent hope that by the blessings of Providence you may long be spared to enjoy health, happiness and mutual love’ was granted, with Alexander living until the age of 83 and Alice surviving to 98.

Bedford Marsh Esquire, Ex Alderman of the Borough of Kingston upon Thames and Justice of the Peace for the Borough
20 December 1904

Signed WT for ‘Winifred Tuckfield’. Winifred had early experience of making technical drawings to accompany the patent applications made by her father, Charles Tuckfield, an inventor. During the First World War she worked as a draftswoman at the National Physical Laboratory. This talent would have helped her to plot the intricacies of the interlacing in the centre of this address, which is laid out like the page of an illuminated book. The text celebrates the occasion of Bedford Marsh’s ‘well-earned retirement after…nearly forty years’.

Alderman John James Collings Esquire JP
25 September, 1906

Signed ‘MEC’, presumably not Marian Coombes, this does not match any other initials of a Knox Guild Member. Art Nouveau style flowers embellish the front and inside of the document. The address congratulates Alderman Collings on his marriage, which must have been made in later life, as he had already been a member of the Council for over 28 years.

Magnus George Moatt Esquire, JP
28 September 1909

Signed ‘MEC’. One word has been inserted after it was missed out and the names of Mayor Finny and Harold Winser are pencilled in, rather than inked, giving this document a slightly unfinished feel. The address was presented on Moatt’s resignation of the office of Alderman of the borough and highlights ‘Your indomitable and successful efforts for the provision of efficient bands of music in our beautiful public gardens whereby nature and art happily conduce to the refined enjoyment of the inhabitants’.

William Garn Esquire, Ex-Alderman of the Borough
9 November 1906
Signed ‘GB’. The inside has a lovely rendering in blue and green ink of the three salmon from the arms of Kingston Borough. Very similar fish feature in some of Denise Wren’s later designs. The address commemorated Garn’s retirement from the Council after a twenty year membership.

Images Courtesy of Kingston Heritage Service

References
(1) Wren. R (2001) ‘New Light from Old Records: Archibald Knox’s Approach to his Work’ in Martin, S. Archibald Knox London: Art Books International, p.110
(2) Wren. R. (1997) The Knox Guild and Its Background: A Scrapbook of Recollections and Pictures with an Archival Index unpublished folder deposited in several archives including Kingston Heritage Service, p.15-16
(3) Anscombe, I. (2001) ‘A Sense of Place: Knox, Manx Nationalism and the Celtic Revival’, in Martin, S. Archibald Knox London: Art Books International, p.101
(4) Wren. R. (1997) The Knox Guild and Its Background: A Scrapbook of Recollections and Pictures with an Archival Index unpublished folder deposited in several archives including Kingston Heritage Service, p.10

The Knox Guild 1912-1935: Part II Lesser known members

This follows on from my post of March 8, 2022 The Knox Guild 1912-1935: Part I, The Members

Kingston School of Art with Hogsmill River in foreground

I have only been able to discover small amounts of information so far on the remaining members named on the Knox Guild founding document, so this is a work in progress. Some people who joined the group may not have remained members, particularly as World War I began a couple of years after the formation of the Guild. Archibald Knox also taught some classes at Wimbledon Technical College (later College of Arts) and at Redhill Technical Institute (now East Surrey College) . One of the few texts by Knox ‘The Arms of the Earl of Surrey’ appears in a 1907 issue of the Wimbledon Technical College magazine The Well. Thus the Knox Guild students could have attended his classes at Kingston, Wimbledon or Redhill.

Norah Black was clearly a close friend of the Wrens at one point, since her name appears on a calligraphic design ‘We Wish You Every Happiness’ made in honour of Denise and Henrys’ marriage in 1915. As there is not much on her elsewhere, perhaps she too married and changed her surname.

Marian Coombes‘s name appears on the same design celebrating the Wrens’ wedding as Norah Black’s. She is described in Guild literature as a Guild Needlecraft Worker and Raffia Worker. There are a number of lithographs by Marian Coombes in the Kingston Heritage Service collection of local sites including Kingston and Clattern Bridges, All Saints Church, the Market Place and the Bittoms. The 1921 Knox Guild exhibition catalogue held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery states that she made the linoleum block from which the poster for the exhibition was printed. This beautiful poster, in blue and green, which looks as if it was designed by Denise Wren, is also in the Kingston Heritage Service collection.

Lilian Harding is listed under ’Honorary Members’ with an address near Johannesburgh, South Africa in a 1921 printed booklet entitled ‘Rules of the Knox Guild’.

May Harris A Miss Harris is listed as one of the Guild’s Needlecraft Workers in the Whitechapel Exhibition catalogue of 1925. It appears that the majority of the Guild members possessed this skill, as many women of this period would have done. The Wren Archive holds a piece of artwork by Gertrude Harris made for an examination. Possibly May was a relative?

Harold A. Winser was a rare male member of the Guild, Harold’s day job was that of Town Clerk. Snippets of his rather flowery poetry appear in the 1925 Catalogue under the initials ‘HAW’, such as a sonnet entitled ‘An Autumn Eve’. Kingston Borough commissioned a number of illuminated addresses from Denise Wren which they presented to distinguished individuals, such as Robert Baden Powell, who was admitted as ‘honorary freeman’ in 1913. So possibly Harold Winser encountered the Knox Guild through this connection.

Postcard of Kingston on Thames Market Place around the time when the Knox Guild rented premises there

Tony Althopp Rosemary Wren gives the name of another male member of the Guild as Tony Althopp. This isn’t a very common name, so I wondered whether the scrawl on the document could instead be a surname linked to the first person to take pottery lessons from Denise Wren? This was a Miss Uhtoff, described as ‘a woman of strong character who worked as a gardener’. The image seems to have been taken from a photo, on the back of which Rosemary Wren has written ‘Miss Uhtoff/ 1912/ Denise Tuckfield’s first student’. On the wall to the left of Miss Uhtoff is what looks like a Marian Coombes lithograph of Clattern Bridge, so the photograph may have been taken at the Knox Guild’s headquarters at 24 Market Place, rooms above what in the present day was until recently a branch of Links of London.

Celia Ellis There is no mention of her in any of the Knox Guild related literature, but the wartime activities of a Celia Ellis are detailed in the same article on ‘Wimbledon Suffragists in the Great War’ featuring Annie Begg, which was mentioned in the previous post:

https://mitchamwarmemorial.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/wimbledon-suffragists/

This provides the detail that Ellis’s grandfather was involved with William Morris’s Kelmscott Press. It seems probable, given this background as well the location and link with Annie Begg, that she is the same person who signed the Knox Guild document.

Gertrude Connor Smith is listed as a Guild Needlecraft Worker. She wrote a text on needlework in the 1925 Whitechapel exhibition catalogue. The previous year The Times reviewed the Knox Guild’s 11^th annual exhibition at Kingston Museum making particular mention of ‘exquisite embroidery by Miss Gertrude Connor Smith’. (1)

Molly Walters ‘Mrs. Molly Walters, with designs for children’s wallpapers, curtains, and coloured tiles…’ is mentioned in a Guardian article on a British Industries Textiles Fair held at White City in February 1937 (2). This was probably the last time any members of the Knox Guild would exhibit together as a group. The V&A holds a large floral textile design by Molly Walters of the Knox Guild. However, Denise Wren freelanced as a textile designer from the late 1930s to the 1950s and sometimes used the Knox Guild as a brand name for her designs during that time.

There are a number of other individuals who were not included on the founding document but feature in Knox Guild publications, so they presumably joined the group at a later date.

Mr John Bacon was among the Guild Dyers, Spinner, and Weavers
Mrs Burtt was a Guild Gesso Worker
Miss Clapham was a Guild Leather-Worker and Raffia Worker
Miss Cooke was a Guild Leather-Worker
Henry Wren, Denise’s husband, was Vice-Chairman of the Knox Guild. He attended evening classes at Wimbledon Technical College and first met his wife through attending a Knox Guild exhibition.

Other significant contacts

Mabel Roffey It is likely that the Wrens met Mabel Roffey through their various craft contacts. Her book Simple Basketry For Home and Schools with notes on Playful Basketry by Denise Wren was published by Pitman in 1930. Like Annie Begg’s book on raffia, it was part of the Craft For All series. The foreword is by Henry Wren and the author thanks him for ‘planning this book and for setting out my practical workshop and teaching experience of a good many years’. Roffey had a stall and gave demonstrations of basketry at the Artist Craftsman Exhibitions at Westminster Hall organised by Henry Wren in 1928, 1929 and 1934 and in 1933 gave a demonstration of ‘Basketry For Women & Garden Willow Growing’.

Maude Poynter The name M. Poynter appears on the same design celebrating the Wrens’ wedding as Norah Black and Marion Coombes. Maude Poynter was an Australian potter and painter. Her father was a cousin of painter and president of the Royal Academy Edward Poynter. Between 1912 and 1914-15 Pointer studied pottery at Kingston on Thames School of Art where it is likely she encountered Denise Wren and the Knox Guild. In 1916, after serving as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) during World War I, Poynter returned to Tasmania and set up the first studio pottery there, in around 1918.

I will be interested to discover more about members of the Knox Guild in the course of my research.

References

(1) The Times (1924) ‘Knox Guild of Design and Craft’ 8 December

(2) The Manchester Guardian (1937) ‘King Visits Textiles Fair’ 18 February

Recalling the Wrens

Last weekend I took the train to Scotland to visit Denise Wren’s son-in-law Peter Crotty. He is one of the few surviving people with firsthand memories of living and working at the Oxshott Pottery. He lived there from around 1970 for eight years, together with Rosemary and Denise Wren, until they relocated to Devon.

Peter kindly invited me to visit him in his home, which is full of Oxshott Pottery material, including many boxes of papers and ceramics. I spent two days with him, interviewing him about his time with the Wrens, his and Rosemary Wrens’ involvement with the Craft Potters Association (CPA) and his own ceramic practice.

The small village of Oxshott was home to a number of potters linked to the Wrens. Helen Pincombe, who had taught Rosemary Wren at Guildford College of Art, lived there during the 1950s and 60s at the Forge in Steel’s Lane, close to the Wrens’ home in Oakshade Road. Beverley and Terry Bell Hughes rented a garage at the Oxshott Pottery during the 1970s. David Canter, who was instrumental in launching the Craftsmen Potters Association shop near Carnaby Street in 1960, and owner of Cranks vegetarian restaurant, lived in nearby Cobham. His interest in pottery was first kindled by attending evening classes taught by Rosemary.

I was allowed to look through five boxes of ephemera to see if there was anything relevant to acquire for Kingston Museum. There were early issues of CPA publication Ceramic Review, press cuttings of interviews with Rosemary and Peter, and three letters from Bill Ismay to the Wrens showing the friendly relationship he had with them. In a letter to David Canter, who was then Honorary Secretary of the CPA, Bill Ismay mentions that it was Denise Wren who first suggested that he should join the CPA, following a visit to the Oxshott Pottery. Membership of the CPA would have introduced Bill Ismay to many new potters and they to a collector who hugely appreciated and purchased a wide range of British studio pottery.

Window display of Oxshott Pottery ceramics

Peter also took me to the Art Room at 21 Lamington Street in Tain and introduced me to its owner, local artist and teacher Jennifer Houliston. They showed me a display of Wren pottery in the window which they have just curated to sell to visitors and which will also be available on Ebay.

Scotland felt pretty chilly compared to down south but it stayed light up to 11 o’clock at night. I had time for a quick walk to admire the beautiful shores of Dornoch Firth before going to bed early so I could make the train back from Inverness the next day.

Rosemary Wren cat and Denise Wren elephant with small ceramic animals in bowl

The Knox Guild 1912-1935: Part I, The Members

‘It is striking how few letters and archives associated with interwar women makers survive. The papers of…male artists, designers and architects, were carefully preserved by their wives and children. But …. women can drop out of the already fragile history of the crafts with alarming ease.’ Tanya Harrod (1999) The Crafts in Britain in the 20^th Century

Poster advertising Knox Guild Exhibition, 1925, Kingston Heritage Service Collection

The Knox Guild has already been mentioned several times in this blog. This group of art students from Archibald Knox’s Design class quit Kingston School of Art in 1912 to form a guild of craftworkers. They were led by Denise and Winifred Tuckfield. Although the committee was headed by men, such as Chair Edgar Holding and Vice Chair Henry Wren (he married Denise in 1915), almost all the other members were women. After five years of Knox’s teaching, the Kingston students felt ready to become craftspeople making and selling their own work.

The Aim and Object of the Guild shall be to encourage Modern Design and Craft on the principles taught by Mr. A. Knox (No. ii of Rules of the Knox Guild of Design and Craft)

The Wren Archive at Kingston Heritage Service contains a copy of a sealed scroll, a founding document with a handwritten list of names of the original Knox Guild members. There are 21 names included, which Rosemary Wren interprets as: May Harris, Maudie Bishop, Mabel Pope, Norah Black, May Holding, Lilian Harding, Annie Begg, Edmund Holding, Marian Coombes, Winifred Tuckfield, Tony Althopp, Elizabeth Ellis, Dorothy Gruchy, Lilian Parker, Annie Parker, ? Williams, C. Ballard, Jessie Smith, Harold A. Winser, Cecil/ Celia Ellis? and Denise K. Tuckfield (1).

The Knox Guild of Design and Craft rented premises at 24 Market Place where they made and sold craft products. They held their first exhibition in Kingston Museum Art Gallery in 1914. The Crafts Study Centre at Farnham holds a beautiful, faded photograph of this group of young women gathered in an interior, one wearing overalls embroidered with ‘KGDC’: Knox Guild of Design and Craft. The Guild’s overalls, fittingly, were ‘in suffragette colours’ which were purple, white and green.

Following World War I the Knox Guild exhibited annually in Kingston Art Gallery until 1935. In 1921, 1923 and 1925 they exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in the East End of London. Some idea of the range of craft skills possessed by members of the Guild is illustrated in the catalogues printed for these three exhibitions. Knox Guild members gave many demonstrations of crafts like pottery and weaving to attract and educate visitors. Members also made and sold silverwork, leatherwork, lace, embroidery, enamelling and raffia. Teaching and dissemination of craft skills was of primary importance. The 1921 Knox Guild exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery had a particularly wide reach, showing the strength of popular interest in craft:
‘The London County Council…sent every day 250 school children to see it, while hundreds of the teachers came to see the practical demonstrations of art and craft work. During the month it was open over 54,000 people visited….’ (2).

Archibald Knox, Master of the Guild (1864-1933)
Knox was the inspiration behind the Guild. When he quit Kingston School of Art, he returned to his homeland, the Isle of Man, so kept in touch mainly by letter. Knox displayed his luminous watercolours of the Isle of Man during the exhibitions held at the Whitechapel Gallery. He occasionally ventured South to visit his former pupils and Rosemary Wren recalls him coming to the Wren’s home, Potterscroft, to hold a class in lettering for Knox Guild members (1).

Winifred Tuckfield (1889-1955)
Winifred was Denise Wren’s elder sister. She was the devoted and active Honorary Secretary of the Knox Guild over the entire span of its existence. Although Winifred didn’t pass many of her art exams at Kingston, she was talented at technical drawings, which she made to illustrate the many patents registered by her engineer father Charles Tuckfield. This also stood her in good stead when she worked at the National Physical Laboratory during World War I as a draughtsman, alongside fellow Guild member Maude Bishop.

Winifred was a keen craftworker who made some beautiful objects, such as spun and woven clothing and taught evening classes in leatherwork and cloisonne enamel. She was also a leading member of interwar leftwing group the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, who favoured healthy outdoor activities. The Museum of London holds two items Winifred made for the Kibbo Kift, her name-sign and a leather binding, as well as a photograph of her running a Kibbo Kift stall at Crystal Palace.

The monument over Hall Caine's grave, by Archibald Knox. Maughold churchyard, Isle of Man. — The monument over Hall Caine’s grave, by Archibald Knox. Maughold churchyard, Isle of Man.

Significantly, though Denise was the better artist, it was to Winifred that Knox turned to complete the design he was working on when he was dying. This was a memorial stone for the grave of Manx novelist Hall Caine. It was a daunting responsibility for Winifred to complete her mentor’s design, yet simultaneously a great honour. She had to travel to the Isle of Man to finish this project. It is not surprising that there was some sympathy between Knox and Winifred, given her loyal devotion to an organisation set up in Knox’s name, intent on putting his ideas into practice. They were also living in similar circumstances, both single, their lives very much devoted to their art and local communities, since Winifred did not meet her partner until later in life.

I will write a longer post on Winifred at a later date as there is quite a bit of material on her and she is an inspirational character in her independent approach to life, and in her determination, like Denise, to get as many people as possible involved in craft activities.

Edgar Thomas Holding (1870-1952)
Chairman of the Knox Guild, he secured the Guild’s premises in the Market Place at Kingston when they started out. For some reason his first name is erroneously written as ‘Edmund’ on the Guild’s founding document. However, all the genealogical information available on him indicates that it was Edgar.

Holding was a tailor by trade as well as a member of the Royal Watercolour Society. He painted watercolours of the countryside around Pullborough, where the Holdings resided. He was also a talented amateur photographer who photographed the composer Elgar and his family. There are several photographs by him of Guild members, including his wife May. The Manx Museum has a photograph of Edgar Holding, describing him as ‘Photographer Friend of Archibald Knox’. Holding may have funded Knox’s trip to the US in 1912 when the latter was looking for design work after he quit both Liberty’s and Kingston School of Art (3).

Front cover of Notes on Spinning and Dyeing Wool by May Holding — Front cover of ‘Notes on Spinning and Dyeing Wool’ by May Holding

May Holding (b.1869)
May Smith was born in Ireland. The Holdings lived initially in Wimbledon, then moved to a house in Pullborough, Sussex which they decorated themselves, in a similar vein to the Wrens’ creation of Potterscroft. May Holding made hand spun, hand woven, vegetable dyed furnishings for their home and orange curtains for the Wrens at Potterscroft, as well as a fine spun jacket which Denise wears in a 1920s photograph. May wrote the book Notes on Spinning and Dyeing Wool published in 1922. It would be interesting to find out whether she had any contact with well-known weaver Ethel Mairet, active around the same time, who lived in the village of Ditchling alongside other craftmakers like sculptor Eric Gill. Certainly, Hilary Pepler, who ran the Ditchling Press, used to print exhibition posters for the Artist Craftsman Exhibition, an annual craft event organised by Denise Wren’s husband, Henry Wren in the Central Hall in Westminster. May participated in the 1924 Artist Craftsman Exhibition showing handweaving.

Maude Emily Bishop (1890-1975)
She was a stained glass craftworker. In 1921 she was a Knox Guild Committee Member. Maude made decorative glass panels for the Wrens’ house Potterscroft. The beautiful roundel shown here, donated by Rosemary’s husband Peter Crotty, was probably also displayed in the Wrens’ home. The wording around the edge reads ‘The Light Shines Through’. The design is similar to a plate by Denise Wren also depicting a ship in full sail.

In a 1974 letter to Denise Wren, Maude lists her professional achievements. These include working at Christopher Whall’s Studio in 1935. Her first commission was for a memorial window at St. George’s in Palmer’s Green in 1936 and the second in 1947 for a memorial window for Surbiton Hill Methodist Church. Located above the sanctuary, it commemorates Mayor of Surbiton Herbert Samuel Durbin. In 1949 Maude became an Associate Member of the British Society of Master Glass Painters. Craft writer Tanya Harrod points out that that from 1916 onwards around half the best-known practising stained glass artists were women.

Maudie, as she was known to the Wrens, remained a good friend of Denise and of Winifred, with whom she enjoyed going on long country walks. Rosemary remembers her annual Christmas presents of ‘superb children’s books which I Iater realised were classics of illustration of the time’ (1). Maude later moved to Ovingdean near Brighton. In her local church, the 11^th century St.Wulfran’s, she painted St Wilfred and St Richard in the gable above the altar between 1957 and 1963.

Mabel I. Pope (c.1888-1970)
Rosemary Wren recalled: ‘At the Annual Exhibition Mabel Pope’s table always drew a lot of attention. She made jewellery, mostly, as I remember it, of silver with wonderfully-coloured abalone and semi-precious stones. She demonstrated how silver wire could be shaped, joined or made into little balls by using a tiny source of heat with a blow-pipe and charcoal’ (1). In the 1925 Whitechapel Exhibition Catalogue, Mabel writes about metal working and gem setting: ‘It will be seen that the tools and appliances required are of a simple and inexpensive character, and that artistic jewellery of pleasing form, and with good colour effects, can be produced at moderate cost’. In this way she hoped to promote jewellery making as an amateur passtime. Mabel Pope was also described as a Guild Leather Worker and was on the Guild Committee in 1925.

Annie Louisa Begg (1874-1973)
In 1921 and 1925 Annie Begg is listed as a Knox Guild Committee Member and as a Guild Needlecraft Worker and she wrote a piece on Raffia Baskets for the 1925 exhibition catalogue. In 1930 she followed this up with the book Raffia: Methods and Suggestions For Work in the Home, Schools and Women’s Institutes, part of Pitman’s Craft For All series, encouraging people to take up craft hobbies for their wellbeing. It includes ‘a chapter for young craftsmen’ by Denise Wren. The second edition includes a long ‘Appendix on Straw, Grass and Fibre by Denise K Wren’.

Useful information I retrieved through an internet search of the names of Knox Guild members was an article on Wimbledon Suffragists in the Great War among which was Annie Begg’s name.

She was about 40 at the start of WWI, so fifteen years older than most of the art student Knox Guild members. The article doesn’t mention anything about her creative talents, but possibly she took classes part-time. Henry Wren did precisely this, attending Knox’s Wimbledon School of Art evening classes. The article linked to above details Annie Begg’s involvement in welcoming refugees from Belgium to Wimbledon, showing exactly how the Knox Guild got to know the De Clerck brothers, painter Jan and sculptor Oscar, two of the Belgian refugees who sought shelter in the area following the outbreak of World War I. This was mentioned in my earlier post Creative Responses to Change below.

In 1915, the same year that the De Clercks organised their fundraising ‘Belgian Exhibition of Modern Art’ in Kingston Museum Art Gallery, Annie Begg went abroad to help with the war effort. She ended up in Ajaccio in Corsica as an orderly nursing the wounded until 1916. She then moved to Dundee, where her father originated, between 1916 and 1919, to work as matron in a home helping to resettle orphan boys from Serbia in Scotland.

Next month I will post on members of the Knox Guild on whom I currently have less information.

References
(1) Wren. R. (1997) The Knox Guild and Its Background: A Scrapbook of Recollections and Pictures with an Archival Index Unpublished but deposited in several archives including Kingston Heritage Service
(2) Surrey Comet (1921) ‘Kingston. Arts and Crafts Exhibition’, 30 November
(3) Tillbrook, A. et al (2001) ‘The Later Years’ in Martin, S. Archibald Knox London: Art Books International, p.123

W.A. Ismay and the Wrens

Saltglazed stoneware vessel, Denise Wren, 1950s-1970s

Last night Dr. Helen Walsh of York Art Gallery gave a great presentation on ‘W.A. Ismay The Potters’ Champion’, hosted over zoom by the Decorative Arts Society. The talk covered Bill Ismay and the studio pottery collection he built up over fifty years from the 1950s, bequeathed to York Art Gallery. Over 500 potters are represented in his collection and Ismay got to know many of them. Helen Walsh showed an image of Ismay’s favourite mug, made by Denise Wren, which he used daily in conjunction with a teapot by Richard Batterham. Apparently it contained just the right amount of coffee to fill the mug. Functional domestic pottery, Helen Walsh told us, was Ismay’s main passion.

The talk featured a photograph of both the Wrens with Bill Ismay in the interior of the Berkeley Galleries. As well as buying their pots, Ismay also purchased a 1971 fox by Rosemary Wren and a 1978 elephant by Denise Wren, though generally he was less interested in figurative ceramics. Helen Walsh mentioned during the subsequent Q&A session that she likes the humour of Rosemary Wren’s work. I hope to follow up hearing the talk by visiting the exhibition The Yorkshire Tea Ceremony at York Art Gallery before it ends in April.

Handbuilt hippo by Rosemary Wren. From the W.A. Ismay Studio Ceramics Collection at York Art Gallery.

There is more about Ismay in a a multimedia online presentation by York Museum entitled W.A. Ismay Collector and Connoisseur of Studio Ceramics. It includes the information that Ismay reckoned if he had ten or more works by a potter, then they were good, but ‘that they only achieved greatness if the number of works in his collection exceeded thirty’. According to this measure, Rosemary and Denise Wren rank 7^th and 8^th, with a total of 54 and 53 ceramics respectively.

The presentation does point out that Ismay was constrained by his modest budget, but even so, he was clearly fond of the Wrens’ work. Many potters testify to the fact that Bill Ismay encouraged them by collecting their work and I believe that he initiated a postwar reassessment of Denise Wren’s status.

'Artist Potters in England' by Muriel Rose, 1970 — ‘Artist Potters in England’ by Muriel Rose, 1970

As mentioned in the York Museum online presentation, three books sum up the history of British studio pottery during the first half of the 20^thcentury. These were ‘The Modern Potter’ (1947) by Ronald Cooper, ‘The Work of the Modern Potter in England’ (1952) by George Wingfield Digby and ‘Artist Potters in England’ (1955) by Muriel Rose. All these books disregard Denise Wren, who was not considered to be working in the same vein as either of the two main groupings of potters featured, namely Bernard Leach and his apprentices at St. Ives and William Staite-Murray and his pupils at the RCA.

An article by Ismay appearing in Ceramic Review in 1982 is revealing. He starts by stating that:
‘… it has been a pleasure to me that when Muriel Rose was asked by her publisher in the late nineteen-sixties to revise her book (the second edition appeared in 1970), I was one of the people whom she visited, and that pots I had chosen were then illustrated (including one by Denise K. Wren, a potter previously omitted from the survey which the volume made)…’ (1).
Thus through his influence as a knowledgeable collector, Ismay elevated Denise Wren to the position of a recognised studio potter.

Moreover, Ismay writes that ‘The potters who, it appears, most often tempted me to acquire their work are…Denise K. Wren and Rosemary D. Wren…’ (1). He then goes on to mention the mug and teapot Helen Walsh referred to in her talk:
‘One’s favourites are not necessarily showy or spectacular but may be modest – I think of my breakfast duo consisting of a small, globular teapot with a stem handle by Richard Batterham…and a cylinder mug (ashglazed and salted) by Denise Wren.’ (1)

Saltglazed stoneware lidded pots, Denise Wren, 1950s-1970s

Denise must have felt enormously vindicated after toiling in comparative obscurity during the first phase of her career. No doubt this reappraisal also owed much to Rosemary Wren’s joining the Oxshott Pottery from 1947 and her experiments, together with Denise, in making salt-glazed stoneware. Simultaneously, Denise and Rosemary Wrens’ active participation in the founding of the Craft Potters’ Association in 1958 raised their profile among their peers.

Just two years after the Ismay article appeared in Ceramic Review, the Crafts Study Centre, then based in Bath, curated an exhibition entitled The Oxshott Pottery: Denise and Henry Wren. Margot Coatts wrote an accompanying book and catalogue with the same title. Ismay lent some of his Wren pots for this exhibition and Coatts stated that ‘Last year, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, was fortunate to purchase from their daughter Rosemary Wren, a group of pots that illustrate the development in design and technique of Denise Wren’s work over the course of her life.’ (2). This appears to mark the moment when Denise Wren joined the studio pottery canon.

References
(1) W.A. Ismay (1982) ‘Collecting Studio Pottery’, Ceramic Review Issue 76, July/ Aug pp.4-7
(2) Coatts, M. (1984a) The Oxshott Pottery: Denise and Henry Wren Bath: Crafts Study Centre, p.22

Birds from Buxton

Wren Collection Display, Kingston Museum

Two newly acquired Rosemary Wren birds have just been installed in Kingston Museum’s Wren Collection display case. Last year, Bret Gaunt of Buxton Museum and Gallery contacted me to say that he was leading on an Esmee Fairbairn funded project to oversee the dispersal of material from the former Derbyshire School Library Service. Amongst the objects looking to be rehomed were two Rosemary Wren works, a ceramic pigeon and an owl cast in bronze resin.

These birds make a great addition to our Wren display, created in 2019 thanks to a £5K Collections Access Grant the Decorative Arts Society awarded to Kingston Museum. This double case in the Town of Kings Gallery contains 34 Denise Wren ceramics, a textile design on paper, and a poster advertising a 1925 exhibition by the Knox Guild. The interpretation includes information about the Wrens’ life and work and a photograph of Rosemary, aged 4, with her parents and two students packing an outdoor kiln. However, until now there had been no Rosemary Wren objects to include.

'Biding Owl' cast bronze resin by Rosemary Wren,1970 — ‘Biding Owl’ cast bronze resin by Rosemary Wren,1970

The owl is a stylised representation with radiating lines denoting feathers around the eye slits. ‘Rosemary Wren 1970’ is incised on the inner edge of the base. Each bird arrived in a custom made wooden box. The label on the owl sculpture box says ‘Biding Owl’, which I searched for online, to see if it was a species. I didn’t find anything, so presumably it is a description of the owl waiting, perhaps for its prey to appear.

Raku pigeon by Rosemary Wren,1960s-1970s

The pigeon is attached to a wooden base with a metal label which reads ‘Pigeon by Rosemary Wren/ Raku ceramic’. Raku is a method of making pottery that originated in Japan. The object is removed from the kiln while it is still very hot and left to cool rapidly. Thermal shock causes cracks on the surface of the ceramic, known as crackling, giving it an uneven texture. The pigeon is glazed in lifelike colours. It was probably also made in the 1960s or 1970s, a period when Rosemary Wren produced many raku animals.

It looks as if Rosemary Wren used raku in conjunction with other techniques. The following description appears in a catalogue for Mallams Auctioneers listing lots for sale in May 2013, including several ceramics by both Wrens and detailing a ‘Runner duck, raku’ by Rosemary Wren. Presumably it was provided by Rosemary herself, or her husband Peter Crotty (as Rosemary died in 2013):

‘This piece was made in two firings – the first a conventional biscuit firing to make the ware mechanically strong enough as well as absorbent enough for decoration. The second a firing where the biscuited pieces, decorated with bright low firing glazes, are put straight into a red hot pre-heated kiln, where the glazes melt and fuse. After which the piece is withdrawn still red hot and plunged into a bin of sawdust to provide (in this case) a strong black background to the strong primary colours. The piece was finally drenched in water, crackling the glaze and producing the finished effect….The Oxshott Pottery made its living entirely from Raku in the early 1970s and this is a classic example of their work.’

These creatures link to the Denise Wren animal figurines made in plaster moulds in the other half of the display case. Among the miniature animal forms are a parrot and a cockerel. All are positioned at a level where children can easily see them. Creating this fresh display has enhanced the galleries by highlighting Kingston Museum’s studio pottery collection for visitors. We have started to include this material in learning activities and it is highlighted on the website which has proved a valuable platform for reaching out to audiences during the pandemic.

Wasps and weeds

Earthenware vase, Denise Wren, 1920s-30s

Potters Denise and Rosemary Wren were lovers of the natural world, both plants and animals, extending to the wild and weird. The Wrens had chosen to build their home in the village of Oxshott, surrounded by Surrey countryside, though well connected by train to London. According to Rosemary:
‘My mother fervently respected all living things; the original inhabitants of Potters Croft, the frogs, beetles, flies and spiders must not be hurt although their presence was at times inconvenient. One of my earliest memories is of sharing my supper with the mice who enjoyed the warmth behind the fireplace; cupboard doors were left ajar so that they could get out, since they never had problems over getting in.’ (1).

This theme recurs in an interview with potter Robert Fournier, who describes visiting the Oxshott Pottery on several occasions to film Rosemary coiling pottery: ‘…We used to have tea out in the open, it was summertime, and lots of wasps about. And I went to swat a wasp and her mother said ‘You mustn’t swat it, it’s one of our friends!” (2). The exterior scene can further be imagined from Rosemary’s comment that Denise’s ‘respect for the tenacious life of wild plants too hampered her annually renewed resolve to make a garden as full of colour as the seedsmen’s catalogues’. (3)

This urge to preserve the living world was part of the Wrens’ dedication to leading a sustainable existence, keeping goats, birds and bees in the garden which stretched between the house and the pottery workshops. Denise was a prizewinning breeder of budgerigars and parakeets. In May 1933 she proudly featured on the front cover of Cage Birds and Birdworld Magazine seated in front of her nine aviaries, each of which boasted a thatched roof. Denise was also a knowledgeable beekeeper who patented designs for four beehives between 1944 and 1950. Birdhouses, nesting boxes and beehives could be all purchased from the Oxshott Pottery. Many items of Wren clothing were hand dyed, spun or woven by family and friends.

Unsurprisingly, the natural world inspired the Wrens’ pottery. Denise’s ceramics are decorated with stylised birds and fish, painted, incised and slip-trailed. Denise glazed many of the earthenware pots she made in the interwar period in vivid shades of orange, yellow and turquoise. Rosemary explained that ‘She liked these…because in Australia there had been birds with feathers with wonderful rich colours.’ (4). Denise’s parents had migrated from Western Australia to England when she was eight.

During the interwar years, Denise made fashionable moulded figurines of animals including lions, gorillas and a jerboa, a small desert rodent. Photographs showing how to reproduce the latter in a plaster of Paris mould appear in the Wren’s book ‘Handcraft Pottery’ (1928). From the late 1930s Denise moved into designing textiles, and those of her patterns which were not floral usually featured animals. Deer, mice, birds and squirrels were favourite choices.

After a career comeback in the 1950s making wheel thrown saltglazed stoneware, from the mid 1960s Denise became known for her handbuilt elephants, one of which is in the V&A’s collection. These were biscuit fired and smoked in sawdust. Elephants had first captured Denise’s imagination when she watched their daily arrival into the Ceylon Section of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924-25, where she and Henry Wren sold their pots from a stall.

Growing up at Potters’ Croft, Rosemary was accustomed to domestic animals from babyhood ‘I had a basketwork cradle on wheels that was put outside and the dog was put in there to look after me. I always did understand animals better than people.’ (5). She had guinea pigs and rabbits for pets which Denise brought into school for Rosemary and her classmates to model from.

When Rosemary grew up, as well as making thrown pots, she learned a technique for building up hollow coiled ceramics from French potters Albert Diato and Francine Del Pierre. She is known for her birds and other wildlife. Pan Casson Henry, manager of the Craft Potters Association shop for thirteen years from 1960, recalled that ‘Rosemary could make really big sculptures – all started from a small coil in the palm of her hand, and by the time she’d finished, it would be like two feet long and three feet high.’ (6) Robert Fournier commented that David Attenborough, for whom Rosemary made ceramic animals, including an anteater, ‘thought she was a marvellous sculptress’ (7).

Rosemary lived her whole life at the Oxshott Pottery from 1922 until 1978. By this time, she and her partner Peter Crotty were caring full-time for Denise, who was then in her 80s. They finally quit Oxshott because they felt that the village had been overdeveloped. Seeking an even more rural environment, they moved the Oxshott Pottery to Lustleigh in Devon.

Today, the Oxshott Pottery is commemorated in a sign designed for the village by a resident in 2018. It consists of black metal silhouettes of eleven neighbourhood features. In the bottom row is a bird to the left: ‘The Wren mark from the Oxshott Pottery’ and to the right is ‘A pot from the pottery’ (8).

References

1 Coatts, M. (1984) The Oxshott Pottery: Denise and Henry Wren Bath: Crafts Study Centre, p.30.
2 Fournier, R. (2005) Interview with Robert Fournier. Interviewed by Hawksmoor Hughes for National Life Stories Collection: Craft Lives, 2 of 2.
3 Coatts, M. (1984) The Oxshott Pottery: Denise and Henry Wren Bath: Crafts Study Centre, p.30.
4 Wren, R. (2005) Interview with Rosemary Wren. Interviewed by Hawksmoor Hughes for National Life Stories Collection: Craft Lives, 3 of 7.
5 Ibid.
6 Interpreting Ceramics
7 Fournier, R. (2005) Interview with Robert Fournier. Interviewed by Hawksmoor Hughes for National Life Stories Collection: Craft Lives, 2 of 2.
8 FEDORA Magazine (2018) ‘A Traditional Village Sign For Oxshott’, p17.

Time for Knox

Photographic portrait of Archibald Knox by E.T. Holding, c.1907-1914

In February I gave a paper via zoom as part of the Surrey Arts & Humanities Research Group Spring Seminar Series on the theme of Time. You can read a summary of the paper on the SAHRG site.

One of the seminal figures in Denise Wren’s life was Archibald Knox, the Design Master at Kingston School of Art, which she attended from 1907-1912. Historian of education Stuart MacDonald describes this role as that of ‘the most important teacher… who supervised many of the general classes and all the craft classes.’ (1). Winifred Tuckfield, Denise’s elder sister was another student of Knox and recalled these classes:

‘Mr. Knox’s system of teaching was essentially his own. Instead of insisting on the English method of art education by making laborious copies of scraps of museum specimens of ‘styles’ he made at his own expense three thousand lantern slides, illustrating works of art from prehistoric times down to the gipsy caravans of to-day, showing how Art was produced by the workman in the joy of using his chisel or hammer.’ (2)

While Knox created up-to-date visuals, Rosemary Wren recounts a contrasting story Denise told about the teaching given by the Modelling Master at Kingston School of Art. This was Mr. Pike, an ex-pupil of Rodin: ‘…

‘…he belonged to the old academic school. Each of the students was given a different plaster shape to copy in clay…At the end of term Denise suggested that they should all fit their separate models together….To their amazement the combined models made a vast, magnificent head: in fact that of Michelangelo’s David, though Mr. Pike had not seen fit to mention this…’ (3).

This dryly humorous story illustrates the traditional approach to teaching art and design, setting the students to somewhat mindlessly copy classical sculpture. Knox gave the students art history lectures and would have covered classical and Renaissance sculpture, but it seems that Mr. Pike did not make the connection obvious. Students were presumably supposed to absorb skills and knowledge solely from proximity to and emulation of such exemplars.

At the same time as Knox was acting as inspirational mentor to his students at Kingston School of Art, he was also designing fashionable metal homeware items and ceramic garden ornaments for department store Liberty’s of London. One day when the aforementioned Mr. Pike was ill, Knox took the modelling class. He ‘taught the students the technique by which the prototypes were made (for Liberty’s), first building up large pots with thick coils of clay, with designs in relief modelled onto the smooth surfaces. The whole shape was then cast in plaster of Paris, a process in which the students became skilled, and reproductions of the original were made once again by pressing them very firmly into the moulds.’ (4). This class was what convinced Denise to specialise in pottery.

However, she was hampered by a lack of equipment and facilities. A report written by the Board of Education on Kingston-Upon-Thames School of Art in 1912, notes that ‘there is no room for a muffle furnace for firing pottery, and pots decorated in the School are fired at a local pottery not very suitable for the purpose…A potter’s wheel has been procured, but lack of space prevents its use by the students at present…’. The local pottery mentioned is probably Norbiton Potteries, where Knox suggested that Denise should learn how to throw on the wheel from a Mr. Mercer whose chief occupation was making flowerpots. He also fired the ceramics she made in the pottery’s kiln.

Having read so much praise for Knox’s skill and originality as a teacher from both Tuckfield sisters made me interested to look at the commercial designs he produced for Liberty’s department store in Regent Street. The idea for the paper I gave at the SAHRG seminar was inspired by Knox’s intriguing clocks, which are frequently decorated with time-related messages. Some of these are fairly conventional, such as Tempus Fugit. There is also the paradoxical Festina Lente, which translates as ‘Make haste slowly’.

The more relaxed phrase Time Enough appears on a clock case held by the Manx Museum, perhaps reflecting the slower pace of time on the Isle of Man, still following nature-based cycles. These contrasted with the fast paced deadlines of London, to which Knox returned in 1904, the year he designed this clock case, to take his place as a prolific designer of Liberty’s bestselling Tudric and Cymric ranges of Celtic Revival metalwork, and as Design Master at Kingston. My favourite is the lapidary Never = Forever = able to be cited in an eternal loop, since it replaces the figures on the clockface.

The timepieces are impressive for their varying styles, employing Arts and Crafts motifs, as shown in the image of a clock held by the V&A. Or elegant and minimal proto modernist forms. And there are some whose numerals are remarkably Art Deco in appearance.

The concept of clocks was an obvious link with the theme of time, hence ‘Knox’s Clocks’, and it allowed me to look at themes of nostalgia linked to the Celtic Revival and 2oth century retro sensibilities.

(1) MacDonald, S. (1970) The History and Philosophy of Art Education London: University of London Press Ltd., p.301
(2) Tuckfield, W. (1916) ‘Archibald Knox’ Mannin Issue 7, May, p.381
(3) Wren. R. (1997) The Knox Guild and Its Background: A Scrapbook of Recollections and Pictures with an Archival Index Unpublished but deposited in several archives including Kingston Museum, p.28.
(4) Ibid.

Creative responses to change

Henry Wren demonstrating pottery making at the annual Artist Craftsman Exhibition, 1930s

This New Year we emerge from restricted festivities into total lockdown. Those of us lucky enough to still have a job are used to working from home by now, but the weather is cold and dull, unlike 2020’s springtime quarantine. Shops, cafes and pubs are shuttered again, and parents are back to home schooling on top of the working week. Anxiety at the rapidly increasing rate of Covid infection alternates with a sense of resigned disenchantment. The shutdown is clearly essential, but life has come to a kind of standstill and the vaccine has not yet made an impact.

Most of us alive today in Western Europe have never faced such a reversal of norms. Denise Wren (1891 – 1979) lived through two world wars and found ways to put her endless creativity and talent for improvisation to good use during these challenging periods.

Denise was a young woman when she co-founded the Knox Guild of Design and Craft in 1912. This was a group made up of classmates and their first action was to quit Kingston School of Art in protest. This followed the resignation of their Design Master, Archibald Knox, who was probably disillusioned with the South Kensington exam board’s criticism of his teaching methods. Pledging themselves to his design ideals, Knox Guild members were eager to prove their worth as craftworkers. They rented a studio overlooking Kingston Market Place as a base for their activities.

The Guild held their first exhibition in Kingston Museum Art Gallery in 1914, where they demonstrated crafts like weaving and pottery. They sold jewellery, needlework, handwoven objects, needlepoint lace, leatherwork, watercolours, lithographs and ceramics. However, their enterprise was abruptly shut down by the advent of the First World War. Guild members watched soldiers assembling in the market place to begin their journey to the Western Front.

Denise and Henry Wren married in 1915 and Henry went to work for Intelligence in the War Department. Denise took on a wartime role at the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington. She was in charge of organising the gauge store, an assembly of objects used in munitions factories to ensure products were manufactured to standard dimensions. Colleagues included other capable young women like her sister Winifred Tuckfield, Secretary of the Knox Guild, and stained glass maker Maudie Bishop, another Guild member.

The Knox Guild made contact with contemporary artists Jan and Oskar de Clerck when the two brothers arrived in Kingston as refugees via a fishing boat from Belgium. In 1915 the De Clercks organised ‘The Belgian Exhibition of Modern Art’ in Kingston Museum Art Gallery to raise funds for Belgian refugees. Winifred Tuckfield designed the programme for this display of paintings and sculptures by Belgian artists, including A Rainy Day at Kingston by Jan de Clerck.

Local paper the Surrey Comet remarked sardonically of the exhibition: ‘It needs a cultivated taste, no doubt, to appreciate the value of such works, many of which are repellent rather than attractive to the ordinary lover of pictures.’ Post-impressionist artworks were still not widely appreciated in Britain. However, the display reviewed well in The Times. Later that year Jan de Clerck opened the Knox Guild exhibition, held for a fortnight from the end of May in Kingston Museum Art Gallery.

Denise’s daughter Rosemary Wren recalls that the boyfriends and fiancés of many Knox Guild members were killed during the fighting. Henry Wren saw active service in Belgium, where he was wounded. Thankfully, he was able to return home, and underwent some months of outpatient treatment. In 1920, Henry and Denise purchased a plot of land in Oxshott under the Homes for Heroes scheme. Together they built themselves a house to Denise’s design, named Potter’s Croft, alongside which they established the Oxshott Pottery.

By the outbreak of the Second World War, Denise had spent two decades making pots and moved on to designing textiles as her main income source. She paused her design career to manage a team of Women’s Land Army members who grew vegetables to contribute to the war effort. Denise already had experience of raising goats and was a prize-winning bird breeder and beekeeper.

Cultivating the land inspired Denise to devise a scheme for a self-sufficient smallholding. She created an information poster entitled ‘The Homestead Half-Acre Food Unit’. It depicts a plot divided into areas for producing milk, honey, fruit and vegetables, and extols the virtues of organic farming. This way of living fitted in well with the Wrens’ existing lifestyle as craftworkers in a rural setting.

The Wrens’ daughter Rosemary left school in 1939. She hoped to follow in Denise’s footsteps and attend art school, but had to defer her ambition and undertake essential work instead. Rosemary loved animals and initially worked at Chessington Zoo where she looked after some of the creatures in captivity.

Rosemary was in charge of feeding an ostrich, whose eggs were used for food, and she provided the elephants with cabbages and the chimpanzee with onions. She recounts how one day the chimpanzee snatched her brightly coloured glove and tried to put it on his own hand. Rosemary wanted to give him the other glove, but as clothes were rationed, she had to persuade him to return it. She quit her post in disgust after learning that a goat and its kid that she was caring for had been fed to the lions. Perhaps these experiences inspired some of her later ceramic animal sculptures, of which David Attenborough was a fan.

Rosemary’s next wartime venture was joining the Land Army. Invalided out with eczema, she was able to start at art school about a year before the end of the war, choosing to study at Guildford, under potter Helen Pincombe, who had taught at the Royal College of Art. Helen Pincombe became a friend and later moved to Oxshott where she lived for around a decade from the 1950s.

The Wrens were lucky in that they survived both world wars. They were enterprising, making the best of new opportunities to develop skills and interests even during difficult and frustrating times. Henry Wren saw craft as a healthy outlet for human energies, writing in a letter to exhibitors participating in his 1938 Artist Craftsman Exhibition: ‘It seems to me increasingly clear as the years go by that handcraft training is an essential in education and in life. Only by recognising this can we develop citizens leading complete lives and show that in self-expression in creative work the world has a positive alternative to negative militarism.’

Rosemary, who became first Chairman of the Craftsmen Potters’ Association, understood the experience of war as being a motivator for change in the lives of some of her fellow potters: ‘There were lots of men who’d been through the war and wanted to do something that had some kind of imagination to it.’ (1). The Wrens made a conscious choice to be true to their vision of living the good life, even when this was tough. In our own time perhaps a reconsideration of priorities, both individual and collective, will be one of the better outcomes of the pandemic.

(1) Wren, R. (2005) Interview with Rosemary Wren. Interviewed by Hawksmoor Hughes for National Life Stories Collection: Craft Lives

Pottering as panacea

A review of a book entitled Pottering: A Cure for Modern Life by Anna McGovern appeared in the weekend Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/nov/14/when-rearranging-a-drawer-is-restful-the-magic-of-pottering

Authored prior to the pandemic, its publication comes at a moment when many of us are finding lifetime routines interrupted and are encountering closures and postponements of the usual activities and events which punctuate the year. A rethink of daily life lived at a slower pace is timely, and the book touches on a number of themes that interest me in this blog.

Denise, Henry and Rosemary Wren lived an alternative lifestyle, which could be viewed as pottering on a grand scale. Making pots was interspersed with teaching, both at Oxshott and at various colleges in the South East, exhibiting and selling pots, growing vegetables, weaving cloth, keeping goats and breeding parakeets. Even when potting, the Wrens considered the end product of their work to be less significant than the creative process which shaped it. Professor Moira Vincentelli sums up the books they wrote for amateur potters: ‘Words such as ‘spontaneous expression’, ‘form and colour’, ‘warmth and humanity’ suggest the kind of values that are being promoted and the potential of the clay to liberate creativity in the individual.’ (1)

The review of McGovern’s book suggests that ‘there is an element of make do and mend’ to pottering, and one of the key points that comes across in the Wrens’ publications Handcraft Pottery For Workshop and School (1928) and Pottery: The Finger Built Methods (1932) is an enthusiasm for improvisation and experimentation. They use whatever is to hand as a tool, such as ‘a piece of old ruler about 3 inches long for trimming wet bases’ (2) and reuse and recycle bits and pieces like empty biscuit tins and marmalade jars.

However, the Wrens do pursue their activities beyond the simple household tasks advocated by Anna McGovern as an opportunity to unwind. For example, they suggest employing DIY skills to throw together a kiln, made relatively easy by purchasing one of Denise Wren’s handy kiln blueprints with instructions: ‘a very efficient one can be built for shillings rather than pounds if you are prepared to be your own bricklayer and if you are open to work under the starlit sky in case of need’ (3). For less resourceful would-be crafters she recommends hiring a handyman to put it up.

I’m not too convinced by the idea that pottering is ‘a peculiarly British pastime’, as there are certainly equivalents in other languages and cultures. (And this may be qualified in the text). But McGovern’s interpretation also ‘anchors pottering to the home’ and considers that it promotes ‘Localism’, both of which are supremely relevant to the Wrens, who built their own live/work space in Surrey. Denise designed Potters’ Croft as a family home which catered for a creative lifestyle, with the studio doubling as living room and built in cupboards whose tops stored imperial sized drawings. The workshops and kiln yards of the Oxshott Pottery were just at the other end of the garden, so potting as well as pottering was carried out on site, with students encouraged to join the Wrens in their idyllic ‘country village’ making pots al fresco, especially in summertime.

Importantly for McGovern, pottering sets ‘no benchmarks for success’ and the Wrens’ approach allowed amateurs to find a way in to pottery which did not set impossibly high standards, but integrated creativity into everyday experience. The Wren’s daughter Rosemary recalls that ‘The top end of the market -the galleries, the artistic cognoscenti and collectors – was for others. My parents worked with the grass roots….At all times they taught that art should be part of daily life, art is neither more nor less than ‘thorough work: and thorough work can be fine art whether on the walls of a gallery or a shirt for the baby’ (4)….’ So while a bit more strenuous than mere pottering, crafting was less about possessing great talents or conceiving groundbreaking ideas than simply keeping on making to the best of one’s abilities.

Finally, the idea that pottering is ‘beneficial to wellbeing’, agrees with Henry Wren’s declaration that ‘Handcraft’s basic spirit of individual creativeness spells… a fuller life for all’ (5). Pottering: A Cure for Modern Life sounds like a book to read with a clear conscience a few pages at a time in those odd moments between more pressing but less pleasurable activities.

References
(1) Vincentelli, M. (2000) Women and Ceramics: Gendered Vessels Manchester: Manchester University Press, p.186
(2) Wren, H. and D. (1928) Handcraft Pottery For Workshop and School London: Sir I. Pitman & Sons, p.46
(3) Wren, D. (1925) Catalogue of an exhibition of the Knox Guild of Design and Craft with watercolours by A. Knox and drawings and etchings by F. Brangwen held at Whitechapel Art Gallery, October 17-November 14, 1925, p.6
(4) Coatts, M. (1984) The Oxshott Pottery: Denise and Henry Wren Bath: Crafts Study Centre, p.27
(5) Wren, H. (1937) Artist Craftsman Christmas Exhibition of Hand-Arts leaflet