Great Bardfield & Beyond: Mid-Century Art & Design in East Anglia

From 1930 to the early 1970s, the Essex village of Great Bardfield was home to a number of artists whose output has received growing recognition in recent years – most notably Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden. Their work spanned painting, illustration and design, and they used traditional imagery and techniques with a modern inflexion.

The artists’ homes and gardens and the nearby scenery often served as the subject matter for their works, and the details of their lives and connections have come close to displacing the Bloomsbury Group as a subject of curiosity.

This tour adopts Cambridge as a base for exploring the sites, collections and private houses associated with the Great Bardfield artists, their contacts, and the parallel movements of their time. Starting at the Fitzwilliam Museum, we will make a special study of watercolours and drawings by members of the group, and view items that reveal some of their influences.

Our tour continues with a visit to the Fry Art Gallery in Saffron Walden, which has done more than any other institution to showcase this network of artists, and we will also enjoy a walking tour of Great Bardfield itself.

A further highlight will be a visit to the Warner Textile Archive, an important resource for textiles of the 1930s, and home to work by Marianne Straub, who lived at Great Bardfield. We will continue with a visit to Silver End, the garden village built between the wars, partly in a Modern style, by the Crittal family who were supporters of the Great Bardfield movement.

We also look forward to taking in the principal collection of Bawden’s graphic work at The Higgins Bedford, followed by a study session at Cambridge University Library. Here, we will discover the archive of the Curwen Press, which commissioned some of the earliest design work by Bawden and Ravilious, and acted as a major patron for other artists.

Our tour concludes with a visit to Jim Ede’s Kettle’s Yard, where paintings and sculptures in a domestic setting tell a parallel story of interwar art and taste.

We will stay throughout at the four-star Hilton Cambridge City Centre Hotel, conveniently located in the heart of Cambridge.

This tour will be led by Alan Powers, PhD, who studied at the University of Cambridge and is one of the UK’s leading architectural historians. A former Chairman of the 20th Century Society, Alan has published widely on all aspects of 20th century architecture and design. He was Professor at the University of Greenwich School, and has lectured at New York University in London. His publications include Modern: The Modern Movement in Britain, and Bauhaus Goes West.