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Lthe time you walked on London UndergroundI’m just thinking that you haven’t stopped to think about how you lived in history. However, tube fabrics have an interesting place in British design. And now the woman who is at the center of their story is the subject of a protest aimed at dragging her back into the story, long after her contribution was not received.
It’s MarxThe designs of what was then the London Passenger Transport Board were put on hold in the 1960s, but a major project in the 1930s changed the design of train interiors forever. Until they are tasked with creating new models, the tube board can be summed up in one word: dreary. They were created in the homes and factories that produced the fabric – moquette, a hard velvet-like texture that is still used today – and were made in brown and gray colors to match the mud and sweat left by London’s drivers.
Marx, who was taken in 1937 together Paul Nash and Marion Dorn to create a suitable design for the first time, he ran with a different idea. Why, he wondered, make bright, fun and cheerful furniture so that instead of combining with dirt, they hide it? That idea has guided London Transport ever since, and visitors A Life Model: Enid Marx and Modern British Design at Compton Verney in Warwickshire, opening on Saturday, will see examples of Marx’s early designs in that vein, including red and green geometric patterns – eye-catching ovals that intersect, interspersed with large red and green diamonds – which may be his most famous tube fabric.
He called the model the Shield, because it was based on an African painting that Marx had seen in the British Museum. He spent many hours there, as well as at the V&A, where he was very interested in Indian woodwork and its history. “He was drawn to cubism and purism – but above all, his work was shaped by the exhibitions he saw in London museums,” says Az Crawford, curator of the exhibition. “And although he is sometimes credited with adopting this design, he came from a time when imperialism and patriotism overshadowed everything else.
Marx’s work also marks a slippery slope, says Crawford, between the Arts and Crafts and British modern periods. “He often talked about the ‘washed things of William Morris’, and he was determined to change the process and style of the British. There is a lot of weight in his designs. He was taken as decoration but in fact he is looking much deeper, putting messages about African art, colonial influences, and how art takes to another.”
One interesting aspect of Marx’s work, agrees with Crawford, is the contradiction between the maturity of the work he created – he often took the industry to task for failing to work in accordance with what he did in the production of his design – and the contradictions that supported his life. Marx’s life partner was the historian Margaret Lambert, and the two were part of what Crawford calls the “sapphic group”, many of whom, like Marx, were designers and makers. Marx went by the name Marco, and he played his bows – the Compton Verney exhibition will include examples, including his iconic bows, from Spreyton, named after the Devon village where Lambert grew up.
“They were married, at a time when homosexuality was illegal,” says Crawford. “They lived at odds with each other – but they were all from good backgrounds, and their same-sex union can be seen as less of a privilege than a word of condemnation.” Marx’s persona, Crawford adds, was ironically shot: he refused to be compartmentalized throughout his life. “She didn’t consider herself a feminist. She is said to have been Karl’s first cousin but “it’s a loose connection – Enid probably wanted to distance herself from her history”. For Crawford, Marx’s relationship is a means of communication with the obstacles he had to deal with. She was able to live a free life, but she was always restrained which I think comes from her gender, and because of the expectations of the class for women.”
Born in London in 1902, the youngest of three children in a middle-class Jewish family, Enid Crystal Dorothy Marx was educated at the prestigious Roedean School in Sussex before studying at the Royal College of Art, where Nash was her teacher, and her friends included Barbara Hepworth and Eric Ravilious.
His father was a businessman who used to make paper, and this inspired him to develop an interest in what he called “popular art”. But this was seen as scandalous at RCA, where it failed its final assessment. Popular art, however, would be the backbone of his life’s work: trained in a workshop of famous textile artists. Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcherhe continued to create his own block-printed clothing – examples of which will be in the Compton Verney exhibition – but then turned to industrial design when he was sent to London Transport patterns.
During World War II, he became one of the organizers of the game support programthe goal was to create quality, affordable housing for bombed-out families. The secret was a small repetition, which reduces waste in the production of curtains and furniture covers: one of its supporting fabrics, Chevron – a zigzag pattern of brown and blue – is one of the exhibits at Compton Verney.
In 1944, in recognition of her outstanding contribution to design, Marx became only the third woman to be awarded the Royal Designer for Industry; but the war years would be his best. Disappointments followed: only one of his designs was included in the 1951 Festival of Britain, and when he was sent to work on printing stamps for the new queen in 1952, and although his design of Elizabeth’s portrait was seen as a success, many stamps were later rejected – including one that was captured by the queen who did not feel she was worth the price. it brings back memories of the misfortunes of his ancestor Charles II who hid in the royal oak.
His work later included designing book covers for publishers, and creating a woodblock print book that was published in 1985 as ABC of Birds and Animalslater republished in 2000 as Marco’s Animal Alphabet. By then Marx had been dead for two years, outliving Lambert by three years.
But Marx’s love of popular art was not limited to his creations: he and Lambert, whose partnership lasted more than 60 years, were avid collectors of mass-produced paintings, which they gave to Compton Verney. The exhibition there will be full of corn dolls of the two; pottery including Wedgwood pieces, dogs, and a portrait of St George; a plaster model of a gingerbread cat (they always have Siamese) and many other interesting things.
“It’s a mixed bag,” says Oli McCall, managing director at Compton Verney. But Marx loved it all his life, and you can clearly see how the movement influenced his work. Of the 165 or so works in the show are pieces on loan from the V&A, where Marx left his archive – some of which, says McCall, have never been seen as they were preserved. “He’s not welcomed – he’s forgotten – and this show wants to explore his life and work and explore deeply what affects him,” he says.
