Moda (Museum of Design and Architecture) and Roger Nicholson

 A couple of weeks ago I had a very exciting and emotional day visiting Moda, Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture which is part of Middlesex University. They have a fantastic archive and amongst that are many wallpaper designs by my father Roger and uncle Robert Nicholson... along with many of their contemporaries of that time ... 1956 - late 1960s.

This body of work was made for Palladio Wallpapers and I remember a lot of the designs being worked on in his studio as a very young child. Some of them were used to cover the walls of our house in Sissinghurst, Kent and when I came across one which I had in my bedroom it was like coming across an old and dear friend, every tendril and break in the ink was familiar, every secret face hidden in amongst the design, we all look so intently at our bedroom walls as children, a sort of half dreamlike place where the wallpaper design takes on a life of it's own full of monsters and faces, movements, and secret places. You can see the design below ... of an intertwining clematis.

The designs were all in old wallpaper sample books kindly brought out by the lady who had got in touch with me from the museum, together with articles of the time from Architectural Reviews, with adverts for the wallpapers drawn by my father ...
Every page turned was thrilling and I found I was able to spot many of his and also of a dear family friend Ted Hughes (not the poet!), Eric Thomas and of my uncle Robert Nicholson.

But a surprise was finding papers designed by my father which I had not seen before! Such a delight to see them and together with the archive I have at home and also the collection at the V&A, I realise that I must do something about bringing his work to the public eye. I am going with Moda to see the collection at the V&A very soon and I am really excited to go into the inner sanctum ... I will report back of course.

I hope to gather more information over the next few weeks and add to this article ... Forgive the iphoneness of the photos!

I am pretty sure this is one of my fathers ... the faces are so like those he drew ....

Detail

Robert Nicholson design

One I had not seen ...

This was my bedroom wallpaper!

Robert Nicholson

Add caption

Add caption

Canvaswork by Jennifer Gray

Yes, yes I am working really hard on quite a number of new designs of which more later but I just want to share something which I am quite pleased with and which gave me a warm glow and pat of encouragement which I needed at the beginning of the week ... knowing I would be sat in front of the computer for many hours ...

I saw on Pinterest a front cover illustration for a book which got my radars twirling. Canvas Work by Jennifer Gray pub 1960.
Here it is below and you can see why I might be excited. Maybe not but it did it for me and I looked further, went to the wonderful ABE BOOKS (secondhand books from all over the world) and found a copy for a few pounds £3.00 I think. What treasure! It came on Monday, and I was thrilled with it, my absolute tip top style of decoration and drawings good stitch explanations and diagrams, fantastic colour pallete.

THEN I saw a beautiful seat cover which immediately looked familiar in style and yes, it was by my mother! I have not seen this design before and it was worked during her time with the Needlework Development Scheme, and it is perfect. I spent the afternoon completely distracted by the whole thing and drew up the design in Illustrator, printed it onto white linen and am in the process of working it up hopefully turning into a design for our new range. Though it may be a lovely download too ... maybe both! But I will post the results very soon.

Enjoy the rest of the pages from the book I have scanned!

Front Cover

My surprise, my mother's design for a seat cover!

Detail

Page from Canvas Work by Jennifer Gray 1960   Buildings

Page from Canvas Work by Jennifer Gray 1960 ... Angels

Page from Canvas Work by Jennifer Gray 1960 ... Flora and Fauna

Page from Canvas Work by Jennifer Gray 1960 ... Birds

Joan Nicholson Portrait by Jehan Daly

Yesterday evening a small miracle happened .... I was in the garden attempting to pull up weeds as a break from the computer toil of the day, and ... the land line rang. I never use my land line and am always a little suspicious of it when it rings as everyone I know rings me on my mobile these days.

The message was faint but enough to make me curious to call the number back. The number I called was answered by a lovely gentleman, who back in the 1980s had bought a painting at a country house sale. The painting was by Jehan Daly of a Mrs Roger Nicholson, my mother. He found my number from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. He was on a mission to find out who the woman in the portrait was, and I was so excited to see it ... he sent it to me in an email shortly after our conversation. Here it is (above), and it is quite lovely. Jehen Daly was a great family friend of my parents from after the war and he with John Ward and Gordon Davies painted together on various projects and my mother also sat for them. This portrait, though I have never seen it before, is so familiar as I have many sketches of that same pose in my collection, by both Jehan and my father, also oil paintings of her likewise. I know that chair ... it is an old friend ... he was also my sister's godfather and a sweet and gentle man. I have a photo taken by my father of him holding a tabby kitten, black and white, he in ubiquitous tweeds, very of the time ... I am just now rummaging around in the garage to find the old photos so I can scan it in to send to Bill the owner of the painting. I also have an oil painting of Jehan at his easel by my father. 

Then I was ferreting around online to see what there was on Jehan Daly and there is not a great deal but  found this site and went on to type in Roger Nicholson and found this beautiful painting (below) which again I do not remember at all, but would dearly love to know where it is now. I would love it as it is of a period of my father's painting that I particularly love. He was SO good at colour ... exciting, riveting colour ... I remember thinking as a child that the colours he used were entirely a new breed of unknown colour, nothing like the colours I was learning at school ....

It just kept me thinking of these personal things out in the world I have no idea of the places they have settled or the journeys they have undergone to get there, as my father did not exhibit much, only painting for pleasure he was and is relatively unknown. I would love to have the time to bring them both into the public eye but I have so little time. Anyone out there who would love to do this as a labour of love? Any information about paintings by Roger would be gratefully received ... nancy@nancynicholson.co.uk

Now back to the cobwebs and dead mice in the garage!

Later .... found them! so lovely to find so many and smile through these lovely but very stinky old photos and so many slides! Anyway here is Jehan, my mother and father, all taken around that the time of the portrait. Also the others mentioned ...

Jehan Daly with one of John Wards children I think it may be in Folkestone
where the Wards had a flat.

Jehan Daly

Roger Nicholson

Joan Nicholson with same kitten and my sister Naomi

This is the painting my father Roger did of my mother at the same sitting ...

Jehan Day by Roger Nicholson

Granny Ann

Oil painting by Roger Nicholson of my Grandmother Ann

I have been rooting about in the folios where I keep my father Roger Nicholson's loose sketches and paintings, and some flat oil paintings. This one appeared of my grandmother Ann, then in her 70's when I was just a small child of six maybe. She does appear very severe as many women of that generation could be and obviously took the whole process of having her portrait painted by her youngest son very seriously. She had six children in all, my aunts, Olive and Nina, and my uncles, Jack, Jim, Robert and Roger my father. It was Robert and Roger who were the bright young things in the 1950s in the textile world, designing beautiful wallpapers and fabrics. Some seen below which are now in the V&A archives where I put some of them for safe keeping after he died in 1986

Granny Ann ... Things I remember ... her making wonderful sardine sandwiches and battenburg cake for tea in fluted tea cups on a tray ...  I remember allowing me to riffle through her button box for hours and sit beside her in the sunshine outside her front door while the bees bussed about in the furry irises there, how she disapproved of me saying "yeah" as she was so very English and would rather I had said Yes! Though she lived when her children were small in a corrugated iron hut in the Australian outback where she had gone to be with her husband, and found herself bringing up her six children amongst the spiders and huge ants (my father loved telling me stories about the black Joe's and white Joe's and how they would pitch the two ant rivals in battles, as small boys) with the sun shining piercing swords of burning light through the holes in the corrugated iron roof of their hut ....
But when she came back to England with her youngest children she took pride in her Englishness, her soft white complexion which she powdered to enhance which highlighted the fine soft hairs on her cheeks ... She died at 93 I think ... it was a while back now

Furnishing fabric 1951

1951 Furnishing fabric

This Wallpaper was in my sister Naomi's room ...

Sweet Nostalgia ...

I have been sorting out books on the stairs bookcase and found this old copy of The Faber Book of Comic Verse though I am not sure of the publication date it is at least 1940's. It was a gift from my mother to my father just after the war, on his birthday 27th April 1947. There can't have been even an idea of my brother yet and still they were dreaming of their new life together and all it's possibilities ... My mother, the nurturing earth mother contentedly coping with 16 children all looking like my father with only one daughter! My father lounging around taking it easy smoking his pipe. All photos of him then had a pipe in mouth or hand. Some of the in jokes are forever lost, never to be explained sadly, like the sandwich tree, and the even more mysterious mitre plant ... and "PIP when 306" ?

It is a great treasure this little drawing and good to share with the outside world. Drawing in books? ABSOLUTELY!

Here they are on a picnic before I was born with my brother John and sister Naomi ....

and John and Naomi with my mother.