Journal

Tirzah Garwood’s Marbled Papers

If you had asked her fellow artists in the 1930s what Tirzah Garwood was best known for they would have likely said her marbeled papers.  And they are magnificent.  They fill a whole room in the Dulwich Picture Gallery exhibtion Tirzah Garwood: Beyond Ravilious.

Marbled papers were very popular in the 1930s - like wood cuts and wood engravings they were used as book end papers and then found a fashionable niche as lampshades for candle lights.  

So when Tirzah and Charlotte Epton sat down to try their hands at making them they were not creating a new thing.  They were finding a way of making something commercial that they knew there was a demand for.

“With Charlotte I was learning how to marble by a new method of using petrol which Charlotte and Edward had discovered. It has been suggested to Edward that he should try marbling for wallpaper designs but he did not carry out this plan. Charlotte and I used this new method of marbling to produce pattern papers”

They had links to upmarket craft galleries and private publishers and obviously felt that this was a way to make money which was in short supply at the time.  It was a serious business endeavour. They got a business card.

To begin with it seems to have been a joint venture, they made sheets to decorate the panelling at Brick House - but at some point Charlotte returned to her pottery, leaving Tirzah to carry on with what was a very productive and commercially successful business.

Where most of the marbled papers of the 1930s are combed designs, what Tirzah was creating was quite different.  She used the tray as a monoprint, building up layers.

She often began with a flat printed colour over the whole sheet, the colour mixed to fill the whole tank surface before the paper was floated onto it. 

Then it would be dried and flattened before being put back onto the tank where it was printed with splodges and shapes of thinned oil paints, often several times.  You can see in this close up how many layers of paint there are.

Some are amoeba like

The way the ink spreads and fragments becoming part of the design - a speckled, crackled texture.  

The designs are sophisticated, pared back, layered up.

The creation of these papers was so commercially successful that it was prioritised in the home.  Eric Ravilious writes letters on Tirzah’s behalf while she is printing, saying that she needs to make use of her tank while it is behaving.

When the visit friends she takes her printing tank, setting it up in the laundry room on top of the laundry copper (this would have been about the size of a modern washing machine, with a big metal tank which could be heated with a fire underneath it to produce hot water for the house) - it would have had a flat lid, perfect for a printing tank to stand on).

Tirzah mainly sold her papers through two upmarket craft galleries in London which had been set up by personal friends. They were typical of the avant garde craft galleries set up between the wars, mainly by women.

Each had it’s separate ideal goal, above and beyond sales.

The Little Gallery was run by Muriel Rose and Peggy Turnbull and specifically promoted the work of women artists and textile workers. They wanted to create a beautiful, curated, uncluttered gallery which elevated crafts into the realm (and price bracket) of art.

It was a very fashionable shop, Lady Diana Cooper was an active promoter, and the interior was beautifully arranged, with a mix of British artist makers alongside homewares inported from all around the world.

This advert with printed paper lampshades and boxes shows the kinds of products that Tirzah’s marbelled papers would have been made into.  It also shows why the demand was higher for small patterned sheets which could be shown off well on small items.

And this kind of lampshade - with pleated papers - was the most fashionable type.

The other gallery she sold through was the Dunbar Hay gallery which had been set up by Eric’s art school friend Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn.  This gallery - actually called a shop by its owners - was specifically established in 1936 to act as a broker between artists and industry.  It was Dunbar Hay that introduced Eric to Wedgwood and sparked his best known commission.

By the late 1930s Tirzah was well known for her marbled papers and was approached by Oliver Simon, publisher of Signature, a magazine about graphic art which promoted the work of Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden and other Neo Romantic artists.  He proposed - in a way that may bring a wry smile to many makers - that he was going to write about marbled papers in Signature and would love to feature some of Tirzah’s.  She wrote “The snag was that he didn’t intend to pay me for them but expected that the honour and glory of being extolled in Signature would be enough.  He flattered me by saying that I was the best marbler in Europe and I ought to have more recognition.  I warmly replied that I didn’t want to be well known and I hated the kind of life led by successful people.  After a cup of tea and a biscuit I left, feeling pretty indignent being brought all the way to London for this because he could easily have written to me . . . . I did say I might give him some old papers if I could find enough  . . . . I wasn’t surprised when I heard later that the plan had fallen through owing to lack of enthusiasm from the marblers.” 

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