THE MAKING OF MARTHE ARMITAGE
ARTIST AND PATTERN MAKER
The book explores Marthe’s practice as a pattern maker and artist/ producer of hand-printed wallpaper. Commissioned in 2018, Alison Harley captures her story through a series of essays and images.
Both literally and metaphorically, this book is a quiet, beautiful, and telling object. Not only does it capture the story of artist-designer Marthe Armitage, who was born in 1930 of Dutch parentage and trained at Chelsea College of Art in London from 1947 until 1951, but in doing so it demonstrates a sensitivity to material and design very much of the same period.
The result is a book that is as much a work of art as a document of an artist’s life and work. Her wallpapers, prints, diary entries, sketches, and photograph albums are represented on paper of such high quality that one has a sense of a private viewing of the real things to be found in the studio she has occupied in London for so many years.
Mary Schoeser.
Mary Schoeser is a textile and wallpaper historian and honorary senior research fellow, Victoria and Albert Museum; president, Textile Society (United Kingdom); patron, School of Textiles; patron, Bernat Klein Foundation.
