ARTISTS QUIT EASELS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 August 1941, Page 6

ARTISTS QUIT EASELS

TO GIVE TEXTILE MAKERS WAR TIME DESIGNS. A group of Britain’s better known artists are co-operating with Lancashire in producing dress designs which put new life into fabrics of cotton and rayon. Among the landscape painters who have come forward to help are Paul Nash, Elliott Seabrooke and Duncan Grant; from the stage decorators are John Armstrong, Peter Goffin and Doris Zinkeisen; and illustrators like Vanessa Bell, John Farleigh and Anna Zinkeisen have joined them. Many are doing the new work in their own medium—lithography, s lino cutting; wood-engraving and so on. By clever balance and sense of design they are able to give a sample colour combination the depth and richness of much more expensive multicolour designs. The treatment makes a two-shilling cambric look like a Mayfair material.

Some of their more topical designs include one based upon an engineering blueprint, another with angels in uniform, and a third, featuring photography, which shows a broken wall through which a beautiful lady looks nt a sky dotted with aeroplanes.