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The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the Present

Phylis Barron (1890-1964). Dorothy Larcher (1884-1952). Textile Designers and BlockPrintersAuthor(s): Marjorie Orpin Gaylard and Marjorie Orpin GaylordSource: The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1890-1940, No. 3 (1979), pp. 32-39Published by: The Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the PresentStable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41806217Accessed: 20-01-2019 17:21 UTC

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Phylis Barron (1890-1964). Dorothy Larcher (1884-1952). Textile Designers and Block Printers

by Marjorie Orpin Gaylard

The Partnership of Phylis Barron and Dorothy Larcher came into existence in 1923, and lasted until 1940, when the outbreak of the 1939-45 war made the production of hand-block printed textiles practically impossible.

Both had had a formal academic training as painters, Barron at the Slade School of Fine Art under Steer and Tonks, and Larcher at Hornsey School of Art, and this from the point of view of draughtsmanship and colour was to be invaluable to them.

Phylis Barron had, from the age of fifteen been interested in textiles by the discovery of old French printing blocks while on holiday in France. Finding that no Art School could help or give her information about the technique of printing, she went to the Victoria and Albert Museum and found William Crooks 'A Practical Hand-book of Dyeing and Calico Printing', and later Edward Bancroft's 'Philosophy of Permanent Colours and the best means of producing them by Dyeing and Calico Printing', which was to be her 'books of books' about dyes and dyeing. 1912 to 1920 was a period of trial and error - printing with old wood blocks and experimenting with dyes and techniques of printing in the way the early English textile printers had. Then Barron went to a lecture at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Indian Textiles given by Mr G. P. Baker. This resulted in her first visit to a printing works, which was owned by him at Crayford, and this was of immense value for Mr Baker told her how to make a steamer. During this period she had textiles on show in the Omega Shop. Roger Fry was 'interested in her work and asked her to join the group. Barron refused this invitation partly because she was advised to by a painter friend, as Fry, Grant and Bell were older and well established and partly because 'she feared she would not have the courage to extricate herself'. Another, and most important reason was that the Omega artists were not designer craftsmen, most of their materials being printed commercially in France. In 1918 Barron read a book by Ethel Mairet, to whom she wrote, sending samples of her work. Mairet wrote back and told her that they were the most interesting stuffs she had seen for many years, and suggested she bring her work to a gallery where she, Mairet, was having an exhibition of her woven stuffs. This Barron did, taking a case full of textiles, and leaving them with Mairet, who told Barron to return in two weeks. When Barron returned most of her work had been sold and this made

her realise that she could make her interest in textiles a full time business. Mairet gave her advice on this, and told her to contact the Red Rose Guild of Craftsmen in Manchester. At one of the Guild's exhibitions a Mr Turnbull of 'Turnbull and Stockdale', was interested in her work and she told him of her difficulties in finding out about dyes and printing. He invited her to his printing works and introduced her to his chemist from whom 'she learnt a tremendous amount about dyes'.

Meanwhile, over a period of time, she was exhibiting with Ethel Mairet, and one show in 1920 resulted in a large commission. Mrs Detmar Blow, wife of the Duke of Westminster's architect, visited it and borrowed work to show to her husband. As a result Barron was asked to design all the textiles for the Duke's Elizabethan Yacht 'The Flying Cloud'. This was a very large and important commission for the designing and printing of nearly three hundred yards of material, but its importance is not only in the amount of work, but also in the fact that it led to a series of orders to print textiles and design interiors for the Duke's houses, both in England and France. This work was the mainstay of the business for several years. By this time Phylis Barron had evolved her basic equipment. It was very simple - a trestle table two yards long, the top padded; a coal hammer, with the handle-end covered with a rubber pad, used for printing the wood blocks; a steamer made out of a dustbin; old Russian and French

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blocks and wood blocks made from pear, sycamore or apple, the design being cut with a pen- knife; and a dye trough of her own design, consisting of a small round drum made of wood and canvas impregnated with house paint, tightly stretched, floating within a similar but larger drum. The dyes she was using at this period were indigo; black print, obtained by steeping the material in oak galls, drying and printing with iron; iron rust (brown) and cutch. With business expanding Barron needed assistance Dorothy Larcher heard this and in 1923 joined her. Since leaving Art School Dorothy Larcher had spent several years in India, first recording the frescoes in the Ajanta Caves, and later teaching in a school in Calcutta, where she had lived with an Indian family for several years, and where she had had the opportunity of seeing the traditional Indian methods of dyeing and printing textiles.

With the arrival of Larcher a reorganisation of work was possible. Both designed and cut their own blocks, but the work of dye making and printing was divided between them. Barron, because of her experiments and knowledge of dyes, did all the processes of dye mixing and fixing. She also managed the accounts and the business side of the partnership. Larcher, who had a natural gift for teaching people, trained the two girls who now helped with the printing, and supervised the final printing of the textiles.

Although Barron had evolved a certain technique the two were always experimenting to find new and better ways of printing. The textiles that they printed were on cotton, silk, linen, velvet, organdie and natural holland linen. The technique evolved by Barron when experimenting, that became a distinctive feature of their work, was the one colour mottled texture that was obtained by printing the block in a controlled way, 'the block has to be controlled and understood, it does not come from haphazard and bad printing'. This mottled texture was due to the use of different gum as thickening agents for the dye, (gum tragacanth, British gum, gum Senegal) and varying its consistency to obtain the texture required; by the choice of the materials to be printed, and by the use of unflocked blocks. When Barron had exhibited at the Red Rose Guild her one colour mottled texture prints had horrified the visiting trade representatives, for they considered mottling to be a fault. Barron and Larcher textiles are distinctive because of this method of printing.

Basically Barron and Larcher's stuffs are printed in one colour, although the introduction of two or three colours came in the early 30 's. It was mainly a question of personal taste, but expense and the difficulty of fitting blocks when printing, due partly to the shrinkage of material, was also a factor. To the early colours used reds were added in the 1930's, when a German firm of dye makers supplied them with small quantities of dyes and also gave them technical advice. Although one colour and block were generally used, small blocks were often combined for scarves and dress textiles.

It is interesting to record Barron and Larcher's methods of designing as described by Miss Barron. Designs were made based on natural form, especially in the case of Larcher, and on shapes, textures and shadows. The ideas were then developed until their origin was unrecognizable, for example the design called 'CARNAC', was based on a sketch of the slight carvings that appeared on the pre-historic stones at carnac in Brittany. Although Barron and Larcher visited museums and galleries they never deliberately studied earlier works and there is rarely any historical influence in their designs. When it does appear it arises from ideas which they had unconsciously absorbed. The fashion design trends of the 1920's and 30 's and the work of other designers in the same field did not interest them, neither did they create work for the popular market. At the beginning Miss Barron designed on paper first, but later by a combination of paper work and block cutting. Having had no training in methods of making patterns repeat it took her a long time to work these out, and also that everything had to appear once on the block. The weight of the pattern on the block was very important too, for example there should be nothing heavy around the edges of the block. It was also essential not to have a rectangular block, as this hid the repeat more satisfactorily.

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Plate 1 Barron. Old French and Russian wood-block print

Plate 2 & 2a Barron. Small Captain indigo print (left), block rubbing (right)

Plate 5 Larcher. Chevron block rubbing

Plate 6 Commercial print. Vauxhall

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Plate 3 Textiles printed by Barron and Larcher showing their distinctive mottled texture

Plate 4 Larcher. Large Bunch block rubbing

Plate 7 Barron . Black on pale coffee coloured velvet

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Their work was exhibited in various places. While they lived in London it was on show at their Park Hill Studio. It was also displayed at the English Women's Guild, The Red Rose Guild and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition held in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Barron showed work at the International Exhibition, British Section, Paris 1925. Larcher was commissioned to design and print the curtains for the Bishop's Throne, Winchester Cathedral. They were also given the work of designing and printing the textiles for the new Fellow's Dining Room, Girton College, Cambridge, and acted as advisers on the interior decoration and choice of furniture. In 1928 Muriel Rose started the Little Gallery, Ellis Street, Sloane Street, London, where Barron and Larcher held an exhibition. From this a pattern was set. The Little Gallery became a permanent base, where their textiles were always on show and where commissions were accepted. In addition two exhibitions a year were held there, when new designs were displayed. With the pressure of work increasing there was a need for larger premises and this, combined with a desire to live in the country, caused Barron and Larcher to move to Painswick, Gloucestershire, in 1929. Here they were enabled to employ four girls, trained by Larcher to do the printing, and had a larger space for displaying their textiles. Barron and Larcher's return to pre-industrial methods of dyeing and printing, and the one colour mottled texture of their stuffs was in complete contrast to the work being produced by industry. The trade designs were either dull and lifeless or weak and vulgar imitations of traditional textiles, printed in as many colours as possible. There was little textile design outside the trade. The Omega Workshop, where Barron had exhibited between 1913 and 1919 when it closed, produced some work. Much is written about this workshop but its achievements should be seen in perspective. Omega artists particularly Grant and Bell, who designed textiles, were not true designer craftsmen. They were painters dabbling in design with no appreciation of, or feeling for textiles. There were other people working in this field, such as Reco Capey, an indifferent designer, Alec Walker, M. Dorn, F. Woollard. A firm called 'Footprints' also existed. It was started by Mrs Eric Kennington, and run by Joyce Clissold, who had a sound knowledge of dye mixing and printing but little appreciation of colour and design, for the choice of colour tended to be crude and the design flimsy and unsensitively organised. None of this work can be considered in the same class as Barron and Larcher's. Charles Marriott in his book British Handicrafts' 1943 includes Barron and Larcher in the 'Cotswold School' of artists and handicraft workers. This is placing them in a wrong context for their textiles are very much in the tradition of early English Hand-block printers and never parochial.

Barron and Larcher were an interesting combination of designer-craftsworker. Their individual outlooks and methods of expression were complimentary, producing to a certain degree, a oneness of design outlook. Larcher, the more retiring of the two, produced the more delicate floral patterns, and had an extraordinary gift for visualising what a design would look like before it was printed. Barron also had this visual ability, but not to the degree that Larcher did. The direct, vigorous and adventurous outlook came from Barron. Barron also had a strong antipathy to representation design, hence more of her work is abstract. Neverthe- less it is difficult to distinguish two styles, or to attribute any one textile to either partner during each stage of their development. The early work has a great freedom of expression, and is more vigorous and experimental in approach than the later work. The seventeen years of the partnership were extremely prolific, both in design and work.

The one colour mottled texture, the soundness of design, both naturalistic and abstract with a leaning to the later; the familiarity with textiles, the quality of dyes and technicalities of block cutting, combined with integrity as craftworkers and continuous creative development enabled Barron and Larcher to produce designs that are an integral part of the textile, not patterns printed on the surface of stuffs. Altogether their work has a timeless quality and a feeling for textiles which is rarely found in English designers.

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Bibliography

E. Bancroft, Experimental researches concerning the philosophy of permanent colours; and the best means of producing them , by dyeing , calico printing etc., 2nd ed. 1813

Phyllis Barron, A note on the block printing of coverpaper. In Colour Printing with Linoleum and wood blocks by Allen W. Seaby, Dryad Handicrafts, Leicester 1930

Reco Capey, The printing of Textiles, Chapman and Hall, 1930

T.J. Corbin, Handblock printing on Fabrics, Pitman, 1934

Sir Wm. Crookes, A practical handbook of Dyeing and Calico Printing, Longmans, Green & Co, 1874

Design and Industries Association, Design in modern industry: The year book of the Design and Industries Association 1923/4, Ernest Benn, 1 924

Christopher Dresser, Principles of Decorative Design, Cassell, Petter and Galpin, 3rd ed, 1880

Lovat G. Fraser, Textiles by Britain, Allan and Unwin, 1948

Richard Glazier, Historic Textile Fabrics, Batsford, 1923

L. G. Lawrie, A bibliography of Dyeing and Textile Printing: comprising a list of books from the 16th century to the present time, Chapman, 1946

W. F. Leggett, Ancient and Medieval Dyes, Chemical Publishing Co, 1944

C. Marriott, British Handicrafts, Longmans (Toronto), 1943

Reports on the present position and tendencies of the industrial arts as indicated at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts. Paris 1925, Department of Overseas Trade, n.d.

M. Percival, The Chintz Book, Heinmann, 1923

The Studio Tear Book of Decorative Art, 1 920-1 940

Victoria and Albert Museum, A brief guide to oriental painted, dyed and printed textiles, HMSO, 1950

Victoria and Albert Museum, European Printed Textiles, HMSO, 1949

V. Woolf, Roger Fry: a biography, Hogarth Press, 1940

Periodicals

M. Dane, English Textiles of Modern Design, Studio Vol. 98, No. 436, July 1929 pp 489 to 494

B. Ionides, Textiles, Architectural Review, Vol. 59, No. 353, April 1926 pp 182 to 187.

P. Floud, Calendar of English furnishing fabrics, Architectural Review, Vol. 120, August 1956, pp 126 to 133.

J. MacGibbon, Fabrics in interior decoration, Architectural Review, Vol. 86, Oct 1939, pp 175 to 182.

M. Merivale, Furnishing Fabrics, Studio, Vol. 117, No. March 1939, pp 116 to 123

Modern Hand Printed Fabrics, Homes and Gardens, May 1929, pp 436 to 437.

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P. Nash, Modern English Textiles, Artwork. Vol 2 No. 6 January to March 1926 pp 80 to 87.

N. Pevsner, Omega , Architectural Review Vol. 90, July to Dec 1941 pp 45 to 48.

S. B. Wainwright, Modern Printed Textiles , Studio. Vol. 92, 1926 pp 394 to 400.

Reviews

Crafts No. 27 July-August 1977 pp 40-43.

Studio Vol. 93 No. 401, 1926 p 120-121.

Roger Fry, Vogue , April 1926

Charles Marriott, The Times, March 2nd 1926 p 14d; Dec 4th 1929 p 12d; Dec 1st 1931 p 12d.

Bristol Evening World, June 30th 1933

Charles Marriott, The Times, August 21st 1934; Nov 22nd 1934; Oct 30th 1937 p lOf

Exhibition catalogues

Royal West of England Academy Spring Exhibition, April 25-May 18, 1966

Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, Printed Textiles and paintings by Phyllis Barron, 1890-1964, Dorothy Larcher, 1884-1952, March 4th-l 8th 1967

Holburne of Menstrie Museum Crafts Study Centre Bath, Hand Block Printed Textiles, Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher, March 24-July 2 1978

Art Galleries and Museums

A comprehensive collection of printed textiles and printing blocks of Barron and Larcher are permanently housed in the Crafts Study Centre, Holburne of Menstrie Museum, Bath.

The Royal West of England Academy Bristol (painting, Dorothy Larcher)

The City Art Gallery Bristol (paintings, Dorothy Larcher)

Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum (paintings, Dorothy Larcher)

Whitworth Gallery, University of Manchester (textiles)

City of Manchester Art Gallery (painting, Dorothy Larcher)

Museum and Art Gallery, Newport Gwent (painting, Dorothy Larcher)

/ would like to thank Miss Pamela Y. Lewis for her help with the bibliography, for reading the text and supplying useful comments. And Mr John Kelly for the photographs.

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