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Peggy Angus: Designer, Teacher, Painter
On a recent trip to visit family in Eastbourne I had the pleasure of visiting the Towner Gallery. It’s set back from the seafront tucked between the Congress Theatre, the lawn tennis club and the college and what a treat it is! Like many buildings built in the last few decades it is much more enjoyable to look at the interior than the exterior but it would be almost unthinkable that any regenerative art gallery built 1995-present could have escaped the ‘white plaster, glass and cladding’ disease. The Towner certainly hasn’t.
Still! Architecture aside, there is plenty of exhibition space with three floors rising up from the lobby and a café with wonderful views over the west end of town and up to the Downs and some deliciously exposed concrete render. The exhibit on the first floor was Designing the Everyday: from Bloomsbury and Ravillious to the Present Day and it was genuinely one of the most interesting and well put together exhibits I have ever seen, what’s more it was free. It’s only on until the 31 August so if you find yourself in Sussex in the next week or so it’s a must-see.
I could write a post about it but I feel slightly like Ravillious, Bawden and Sutherland have all had enough time in the limelight. Instead I want to talk about the paid exhibit; Peggy Angus: Designer, Teacher, Painter.
The name Peggy Angus didn’t leap out at me and it actually strikes me as quite brave of the Towner to put on this exhibit showcasing the work of a woman who spent her life as an artist but also as an art teacher and commercial designer. I felt as though I was not witnessing a staid body of work so much as a precis of her life and achievements. Born as the eleventh child of thirteen in Peru she moved to London at a young age and went on to study at the Royal College of Art alongside some names I’ve already mentioned (Bawden, Ravillious). A decade down the line she bought a property close to the Bloomsbury Set’s hideaways in rural East Sussex. It was known as Furlongs and she set about filling it with art and artists (but not, I was pleased to find out, an indoor toilet or electricity).
Coast Guard Cottages, Cuckmere by Peggy Angus, 1947
The Three Bears by Peggy Angus, c.1945
The part of the exhibition I felt I enjoyed most was a collection of items related to her teaching at North London Collegiate School. She only worked there part time but had a profound effect on her students (many of whom went on to become artists, architects and designers in their own rights). On display were exercise books with hand-printed patterns pasted onto the front cover, her hand-made diplomas for students and some examples of her teaching aids including a wonderfully eccentric, almost Soviet board described as ‘A Pattern of our Cultural Inheritance’ which had a grid divided up by period of civilisation and how they fulfilled a cultural need. This was one of the many hints toward her forthright political beliefs which earned her the nickname ‘Red Peggy’.
Tile designs for South Hill primary school, Hemel Hempstead by Peggy Angus, 1950s
Oakleaves by Peggy Angus
During the war her talent for pattern making amongst her students was spotted by the architect FRS Yorke, she went from designing potato prints to working commercially for Carter of Poole creating designs that would be used across England to humanise the interiors of post-war schools, colleges and offices. As well as tiles she put her repeating patterns to use in designing wallpaper which is hung to great effect in the gallery alongside a mosaic floor she designed and numerous tile catalogues and exhibition posters.
This combination of commercial designs, a personal look into her teaching career and the more formal setting of her paintings makes for a wonderful exhibition of the work of a woman who has slipped under the radar in recent years whilst her contemporaries have been gaining more and more attention. If you can make it to Eastbourne before it closes on the 21st September then I say, do!
Bird for Carter’s of Poole by Peggy Angus
Hen for Carter’s of Poole by Peggy Angus
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