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- [00:00]
Ashley Grey
Foreign.
- [00:20]
Joe Andrews
A very happy new year to you. And welcome back to Haptic and Hughes to Tales of Textiles and the start of Season eight. I'm Joe Andrews, a handweaver interested in what textiles tell us about ourselves and our communities. Five years ago I began this podcast at the height of the COVID epidemic. I thought it might run for a season or two and then peter out, but it seems. It seems that Haptic and Hugh opened the lid on a blanket box of extraordinary textile stories and much to my surprise, has found thousands of listeners around the world. I thought it was only me and a few eccentric people like me who were interested in this stuff, but it seems there are a lot more of us than than I imagined during that time. We've had a lot of messages from listeners asking us to follow up on different episodes. So for season eight, here's something a little different. A number of the best loved podcasts updated with what happened next. The very first Haptic and Hugh episode was about the textile designer Althea McNish. I'd been trying to track her down for months and then I discovered that she just died. I was interested in her because she was one of that generation of women.
- [02:00]
Narrator
Who was responsible for bringing Greek design.
- [02:03]
Joe Andrews
Into drab post war homes in the 1950s and 60s, and also because she was the first black textile designer of international standing. But no one seemed to know much about her. I said at the time that she was remembered here and there with a few lines and an obituary or two, but not with the acclaim she deserved.
- [02:31]
Narrator
Maybe it was because she died at a time when so many others were dying too.
- [02:38]
Joe Andrews
Or maybe it was part of a pattern in which this astonishing woman never quite got the recognition she deserved for her achievements and her talent in her lifetime. Five years on and that has changed dramatically. Althea McNish is now one of the best known post war textile designers. Children are taught about her in schools. The William Morris Gallery in London held a well attended retrospective exhibition about her work. There's a biography of McNish in progress and the price of her fabrics at auction have shot up. It's an extraordinary turnaround. So here's the story of Althea McNish from a time when her reputation was just starting its ascent.
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Ashley Grey
She's somebody to be truly celebrated. She brought something truly stunning, a vibrancy, extraordinary knowledge of how to use colour to inspire, how to draw beautifully within a design context, and yet using her life experience really to celebrate the beauty of design.
- [04:05]
Narrator
Ashley Grey is an expert in mid century textiles and Alexis shepherd is a clothing designer.
- [04:13]
Alexis Shepherd
She was a groundbreaker and a pioneer in terms of a Caribbean textile designer and artist who came to prominence very early on, you know, in the late 50s, before there were many black designers on the scene, so to speak. And I think she's an inspiration to all designers, but particularly black designers who are students or aspiring to go into textiles or fashion.
- [04:42]
Narrator
The woman they're talking about is Althea McNish. The first black British designer of international renowned. Althea was responsible for some of the 20th century's most memorable printed fabrics. She was an important part of a prodigiously talented generation of female textile designers who burst into our lives in the wake of the Second World War. Many of us who love textiles do so because we're interested in colour, how it blends and shimmers, how different shades and tints alter the way we feel. It can light up a room or make it into a calm, reflective space. Althea McNish once said, Colour is mine. And she was right. Her artistic ability and her majestic use of colour detonated an optimism and joy into a drab post war Britain. She's also credited with being one of the first people to blur the boundaries between art and design. And because she was producing domestic textiles like curtains and fashion fabrics rather than fine art, they had a profound impact, seeping into homes and lives around the world, from palaces to cottages, changing them forever. This edition of Haptic and Hugh looks at Althea's work as a designer and supports the reassessment of her prodigious talent that has just begun. I can't help feeling that if Althea had been French or Italian, she would have been a household name. But because she was British and a migrant, and because she worked in the relatively anonymous field of textile design, I mean, who knows the name of the person who designed their curtains? Only now is her work beginning to be appreciated. Here's a snapshot of Althea from Christine Cicinska, curator of African and African Diaspora fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, who knew Althea in the later years of her life.
- [06:58]
Christine Cicinska
To my eye, she was always fabulously dressed. You know, my background is fashion design, so I do sort of notice people's clothing, but she was. She always wore her own prints and she always had beautiful colors and they would sort of be clashing colors, but they didn't. They somehow worked. You know, they somehow worked. So she might have an orange print with a red cardigan or in a headscarf in another bright shade, future pink. And she had these fabulously long and elegant hands and she Sort of spoke with her hands. So she was just like this wonderful vision of. Of creativity and always told fabulous stories. And she had this power to, I would say, sort of engage a person and to light up a room. She really did. She was one of these people that you wanted to sit and just listen to for hours. So wonderfully elegant, wonderfully eloquent and just very, very, very creative.
- [07:58]
Narrator
The first thing anyone needs to know about Althea is that she came from Trinidad.
- [08:10]
Christine Cicinska
She always said that everything she worked on, she would see it through tropical eye. I think this is where artists handwriting begin to develop and come out, because I think you do see the world through a particular lens and it's almost as though the Tropics or Trinidad was a blueprint and that was the starting point. She saw the heightened hues in colors, if you like, and that was what she responded to. So that the sense of a liking for bright colors, it's because of the light in the Caribbean. And I think she somehow carried that and applied that or saw everything through that lens with that light, if you like. Almost like putting the world under a light box in which the colours are heightened. So although she might be looking at a typically English scene, like the wheat fields, her eye would pick out the golden hues of wheat in a way that perhaps an English artist might not.
- [09:10]
Narrator
Althea was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad's capital, to loving and educated parents. Her mother was a well regarded dressmaker and her father a writer and publisher. She grew up in a world of ideas, books and fabrics.
- [09:26]
Christine Cicinska
She talked about her mother being a dressmaker and sitting in her mother's studio while she cut patterns and Althea would do the design drawings and tweak the designs that her mum was working on. So it was very much a close relationship. She was a lone child, only child, very, very close to her parents. And I think her parents had had Alcea when they were quite young. So she always described the three of them almost as a little gang, you know, rather than parents and child. They were almost sort of equals in some respects. But absolutely her creativity was seen at a very young age. So they encouraged her art classes in Trinidad, she won art prizes. She was apprenticed to artists in Trinidad. And that was all supported by.
- [10:19]
Narrator
But added to that artistic side of Althea was also a careful technical side. A woman who understood how chemical dyes worked and a skilled draftswoman who took what one writer describes as a very unusual interest in septic tanks. Here's her friend, the clothing designer Alexis Shepherd.
- [10:40]
Alexis Shepherd
The most important thing is the way she sort of bridged the gap between art and textiles. She considered print design as paintings in repeat. Like I said, the fact that at a very early age, or an unusually early age for a textile designer, she had already many skills to call upon. For example, she had been a cartographer and entomological illustrations back in Trinidad, which I'm sure would have sort of honed her skills. And of course she was immersed in the environment of Trinidad, the flora and fauna, and she would have had that sort of wealth of visual references to draw upon in her work when she came to Britain.
- [11:29]
Narrator
By her late 20s, Althea was a successful artist and had good technical skills too. At this stage, no one could have predicted that she would become a textile designer. She came to it by a roundabout route. Althea's father, Joseph McNish, got a job in Britain. As a result of that, Althea applied for and got a scholarship and fou grant to cover the costs of studying architecture in London. And in 1951, three years after the Windrush sailed for Britain with the first post war Caribbean migrants, Althea and her mother left behind the light, the warmth and the color of a comfortable and successful life in Trinidad. They swapped it for the grey drabness of a scruffy, broke post war London. It must have been extreme, extremely hard. But there is a sense in which Althea never left Trinidad. All her life she carried it safely stored within her and expressed it in every piece she ever created.
- [12:46]
Ashley Grey
There was no surrender about having to conform to something that was already happening here. What she was doing was bringing these vibrant colors and again, the way of looking at textiles. You talk about looking at textiles as fine art. To my mind, she's an example of somebody who had that fine artist aesthetic in her DNA already, really.
- [13:10]
Narrator
Ashley Grey is an expert in mid century textiles as she believes that Althea arrived in Britain at just the right moment.
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Ashley Grey
The timing of this again is so perfect. I would compare her to Marian Marlowe and Jacqueline Grog and others. Somebody who was arriving on these shores, who was bringing the richness of their experience with them.
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Narrator
She quickly abandoned the idea of a long training to be an architect and instead swapped to a shorter course at the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts and in the way that our lives can change. On a chance. While she was there, she went to an exhibition of textiles by students at the Central School of Art. She was interested and as a result enrolled on evening courses at Central. Ashley Grey says it was a good.
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Ashley Grey
Choice at Central before she went to the Royal College you had this more radical approach to the arts that understood that there was a wider context that wanted to influence beyond just the oil on canvas or the drawing, and understood that textiles in a domestic arena was a way of, literally a key of unlocking the door to modernism in the home. These textiles that Alfie was producing were bringing something new and vital into the home.
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Narrator
And there at Central, she meets Eduardo Palosi, the legendary Scots Italian teacher and radical civic artist, the man who became known as the father of popular.
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Ashley Grey
But it's Eduardo Pollosi who then says to her, you should be doing textiles. But he doesn't do it in the same way as was said to so many other women at the time, oh, go and do it. It's what women do. Because of his role at Central and his thinking with that radical group of artists, he knew that she could actually bring something exciting into the home. On the one hand, you had those who were genuinely talked down to in terms of, oh, well, really, I think you should be doing this. It's really what the women should be doing. In this case, I don't believe that that was what took place. I think it was a more innovative discussion about where to go with this form of art.
- [15:34]
Narrator
And Althea McNish richly repaid his confidence. She graduated from Central and later from the Royal College of Art in 1957 with a rare combination of talent, technical understanding and the training to become one of the finest textile designers Britain has ever seen. The day after she graduated, she was summoned to the London department store Liberties to meet the chairman, Arthur Stewart Liberty. He commissioned work from her there and then and bundled her into a taxi to meet Zika Ascher, Europe's best known designer of art factor fabrics, particularly silk squares. Zika and his wife, Leda, commissioned work from people like Ben Nicholson, Henry Moore, Picasso, Matisse, Cecil beaton and Althea McNish. He immediately commissioned her to produce designs for Christian Dior.
- [16:27]
Ashley Grey
Often, what the note of the genius is, the genius recognizes, firstly, that less is more, and secondly, understands when to stop and not to overdo a design. When you look at Althea McNeish's textile designs, you see that incredible confidence of an artist and a designer who completely recognizes that they don't have to go on and on and on and on. They can give the impression of a sunflower or something like that, those subtle marking on the initial drawing and then the fire blazing, the colours blazing from behind. And yet at the same time, the reason it works is because of the subtlety, because of that genius of knowing when to stop. That was in her DNA.
- [17:16]
Narrator
Althea's almost immediate success meant that she didn't need to become an in house designer. Instead, she could establish herself as one of a small band of freelance design designers with the independence to experiment and the freedom to produce work they liked. She sold designs to Most of the UK's leading firms, including Heels and Cavendish Textiles. She worked for haute couture houses including Dior, Schiaparelli, Givenchy and Lanvin. For textile firms in Paris, Milan and Lyon. She designed murals for British Rail and for the restaurant of the cruise ship SS Oriana. Her prints appeared in the top European fashion magazines. And when Queen Elizabeth went to Trinidad in the early days of independence, she was dressed in McNish designs.
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Christine Cicinska
And I think Althea absolutely blurred the boundaries between design and art. And maybe she was one of the first people to do that. I know that that's very much the way that textiles are taught now, there is that kind of blurring, but I think she, to my mind, is one of the first people of note to actually do that because that was just the way that she was. There were certain things that she wanted to express through a fabric design that would be worn and other ideas that she wanted to express through a mural that might go on a wall or it might be a painting that would sit in, you know, in a state office. But they were all different aspects of the one artistic voice she created.
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Narrator
Her most celebrated design, Golden Harvest. After a weekend in the Essex countryside, walking through golden wheat fields there and recalling childhood walks through rice fields and sugar cane plantations in Trinidad, the design successfully fuses an English country scene with the deep colours of the Caribbean. It sounds as though it couldn't possibly work, but it does gloriously. It became the best selling design ever produced by Hull Traders, one of the most prominent design houses of the era. Althea's success rested partly on her ability to speak the language of the production process. And she once said that whenever printers told me it couldn't be done, I would show them how to do it. And soon the impossible became possible.
- [19:44]
Christine Cicinska
She was well educated, she was striking, she was creative. Her technical knowledge was second to none. So she would go to factories, she would go to, you know, in this country and in Italy, for example, I remember her saying, and because she could run rings around the technologists, she knew more about printing than they did. She just won everybody over. And I think any comments that she received, she would always say that it was water off a duck's back, you know, because her mission was to create these work to to produce her paintings, to produce her fabrics. I can imagine some people just completely dumbstruck, actually, you know, when they met her.
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Narrator
Althea was a young, striking black woman working in a very white Europe. And yet she said she never experienced discrimination, adding, I was so rare that were dumbfounded. Her friend Alexis shepherd says that she was often the only black person and the only woman in the room.
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Alexis Shepherd
She acknowledges that she was something of a rarity at that time, but she was warmly received generally by people in the textile business. She was unique in that sense, and she had the confidence, and the work was so good, you. You couldn't argue with the work. I think she was so focused and so immersed in what she was doing creatively. She maybe didn't pay much attention to what we might call today microaggressions or the little slights which sometimes people were targeted with in those days and still today. She was protected. She sort of had a protected aura around herself.
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Narrator
And Alexis says that people might have known her name, but often they didn't know who she was.
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Alexis Shepherd
Even her husband, John Weiss, commented for years when he was an architect, he often had the opportunity to use Althea's textiles for part of his work. And he said for years he thought that she was a little old Scottish lady because of her name, Althir McNish, and he was surprised to find that she was a black woman from the Caribbean. So I think the textile designer, unlike perhaps a fashion designer, is less visual. They're not as visually recognizable as a fashion designer is. So the work speaks for itself.
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Narrator
Christine Cicinska remembers Althea describing a skiing trip.
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Christine Cicinska
She was an educated and cultured woman, so she. She did go on skiing trips, and she said that people would just stop and stare. It was almost as though they'd never seen a black woman on a set of skis, and they probably hadn't. She had a great sense of humor, and I think she just thought it was quite funny to watch people's reactions because they clearly had never seen a black woman on skis. And remember, she was really tall as well. So she used to. She modeled at one point in some of the French fashion shows. So she was this tall, willowy, stunning woman.
- [22:50]
Narrator
Christine says Althea rose above it all.
- [22:53]
Christine Cicinska
She never really dwelt on the difficulties, and I think she just saw life as a challenge, and she saw all of these things as frameworks from which she could then become more creative. She never saw anything as an obstacle. And I don't think I ever really had a conversation where she dwelt on hardships. She never spoke about that. She just saw everything that happened in her life as more Christopher the mill of her creativity, if you like.
- [23:23]
Narrator
Nonetheless, Althea McNish has not received the same profile and the same accolades that her white colleagues have. There is no foundation named after her, no permanent collection of her work. She was hugely successful, but lived a modest life. She was never honoured for her immense contribution to British exports at a very difficult time in Britain's history, or for her long years of teaching. Here's Christine.
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Christine Cicinska
She's so important, it saddens me. As someone that has worked in the fashion industry for over 30 years. I didn't hear about her work until I was sort of in my 40s. I don't want young fashion and textile students of any race, but particular designers of colour, artists of colour coming through not to know of her practice, not to know that she was in London in the 1950s, kicking up a storm at the RCA and selling her collection to Liberty. Because how empowering is that story? And I think the way that she handled. She must have experienced racism. I think everyone of colour does at some point. But the way that she was somehow able to elegantly rise above that and to produce fabulous work regardless and let her work talk for her in some ways is really inspiring. I think we can all learn a lesson from that.
- [24:47]
Narrator
And Ashley Grey believes her contribution as a migrant to Britain is important.
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Ashley Grey
She symbolizes, for me, in the wider story of this fascinating area of textiles, she symbolizes that whole point that within Britain we may have had the raw materials, the wool, but we needed the innovation, we needed the ingenuity. We needed the vision of those who could come and work and understand and produce something beautiful with what we had here.
- [25:26]
Narrator
Christine Chichinka says there is beginning to be a reassessment of her career.
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Christine Cicinska
I think this is building momentum. I think many people are gathering to relook at her work, to acknowledge the contribution that she made to the British textile industry and to acknowledge the inspiration that she was and is. Because although she was conscious of her contribution and her legacy, her. There was an interesting modesty within that, or a humility within that, which is very attractive, I think, because when she passed, I remember there was a sort of a flurry of messages just on social media from, you know, artists who are possibly more household names than she is, saying, oh, yes, I met Althea when I was an art student. She came and marked such and such a project, or she came and judged this, or she. She came and did that. So I think that her influence is there in generation upon generation of creative black artists and designers, and none of us really knew that. So I feel that there is this kind of reassessment, and I feel confident that there will be a kind of a flourishing around Althea's practice and that her legacy will be secured, as it should be. The sadness, of course, is that now that she's gone, they can't talk to her firsthand. I'm so relieved that this is a sense of a garnering of interest around.
- [26:57]
Narrator
Her work and a concern from Christine Cicinska, ever the museum curator, that Althea's work shouldn't be lost to future generations.
- [27:07]
Christine Cicinska
I would welcome any materials, whether it's notebooks, whether it's artworks, whether it's fabric, whether it's scrapbooks of newspaper articles on her. I would welcome anything like that because I feel that in the museum, we have the skills and we have people that are able to do the conservation work, that are able to preserve her notebooks, artworks, fabrics for future generations to enjoy. And also we have people that can gather the stories. You know, I'd love to speak to women that wore her clothes and to hear their stories of their first encounters with Althea's clothing. You know, what difference did her wonderfully magical, exuberant prints make to their lives? So there is a. There's a body of deep, deep research work that could be done if we were able to access her archive and bring it into an institution somewhere where this work, where there are skilled people that can do this work, it's not about us and our glory. I'm saying this because I'm passionate about Althea's work. I'm passionate about her legacy, and I want to share that. You know, I want others to experience this exuberant, generous, creative woman that I experience. Others can do that through seeing the brushstroke on paper if we can find and gather those pieces and bring them back together.
- [28:42]
Joe Andrews
Some of that research into Althea Macnish's remarkable life has started as she finds her place in the first rank of post war textile designers. If you'd like to find out more about her and see pictures of some of her work, there are links to further articles and websites on the page for this episode@www.hapticandhue.com. listen and look for season 8 in the upcoming episode of Friends of Haptic and Hugh, which goes out on the third Thursday of each month, we'll be investigating rare medical samplers that were made to show surgeons how to stitch in 18th century Germany and Switzerland, and we'll be talking to the textile archaeologist and heritage crafts teacher Sally Poynter about the different difference between knitting and the much more ancient N binding.
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Sally Poynter
When we look at some of the earliest woolen N binding, we've got some lovely pieces from Coptic period Egypt, which are children's socks and really cheerful sprites. Now, we've always loved putting children in bright clothing and I'm sure 2000 years ago nothing was different. But absolutely brilliant use of short amounts of what would otherwise be expensive dyed yarn is to save up the few arm's length of this, a few arm's length of that, and make your toddler a pair of stripy socks. It's just wonderful.
- [30:27]
Joe Andrews
That's all in the new Travels with Textiles on Friends of Haptic and Hue, and if you're not already a member, you can find out more at@www.hapticandhue.com. join Hapticonhue is hosted by me, Jo Andrews. It's edited and produced by Bill Taylor and sound edited by Charles Lomas of Darkroom Productions. It's an independent podcast free of ads and sponsorship support, supported entirely by its listeners who generously fund us through Buy Me a Coffee or by becoming a Friend of Haptic and Hu. But for now, until next month, it's goodbye from me and please enjoy whatever you are making.
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Narrator
Sa.