WHATEVER the painter and fabric designer Althea McNish touched turned to gold—and pink, orange, lime and purple. She was a one-woman colour explosion against the grey conformity of post-war Britain.
That golden touch was demonstrated only two days after she completed her studies in printed textiles at London’s Royal College of Art (RCA) in the 1950s. Existing work was snapped up by Liberty department store, the head of which, Arthur Stewart-Liberty, then packed her off in a taxi to meet ‘The Mad Silkman’, Zika Ascher. A Czech émigré artist, designer and businessman, Ascher was noted for uniting radical art with chic design. He promptly commissioned a scintillating new collection from the recent postgraduate, which would be bought by leading French fashion houses Dior and Balenciaga.
This dream start in professional life was all the more remarkable because McNish was part of the Windrush Generation, having left her native Trinidad with her mother in 1951, to follow her father to England. She landed, aged 27, with an amazing maturity.
Her images in paint and on printed fabric were as lush as Jean Rhys novels, but without their underlying melancholy—that pervading sadness borne of exile, colour bars and female powerlessness in a world of men. Together with terrific creative talent, McNish had a steely conviction that she could overcome all obstacles by advancing her ‘tropical’ eye.
Esta historia es de la edición March 30, 2022 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición March 30, 2022 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.