29 Facts About Enid Marx

Enid Marx was known familiarly throughout her life as "Marco".

Enid Marx's father was a paper-making engineer, and Marx would later describe his work as a major influence on her interest in mass-produced design and popular art.

Enid Marx travelled with her family in Europe before the First World War, witnessing the avant-garde arts movements of the early 20th century.

Enid Marx first attended South Hampstead High School, after which her parents transferred her to Roedean School for girls from 1916 until 1921, and her artistic studies there included life drawing, printing, and carpentry.

Enid Marx studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts for a year before moving to the painting school at the Royal College of Art in 1922.

Enid Marx failed her Final Diploma Assessment in 1925, and she left the school that year.

Enid Marx's work was judged to be "vulgar", reflecting her interest in popular forms and rejection of the traditional definition of fine arts.

Enid Marx was a versatile artist whose work spanned industrial design and the visual arts.

Enid Marx valued craft and folk art, and derived inspiration for her work from her collections of vernacular artwork and everyday objects.

In 1925, after leaving school before finishing her degree, Enid Marx went to work for the textile designers Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher at their studio in Hampstead.

Enid Marx's work was sold through the Little Gallery, off Sloane Street, and later at Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn's Dunbar Hay gallery.

Enid Marx later recalled in a lecture to other textile designers that 'We all thought at first that the best way of disguising dirt was to use colours which would more or less tone in with the dirt' but that 'the best method of ensuring the seats would look clean after a period of use was to use strongly contrasting tones and rather brilliant colour'.

Enid Marx believed that time and effort could have been saved if the manufacturers had consulted with her before making the necessary modifications.

Enid Marx became responsible for its range of textiles, eventually creating over 30 commissioned designs.

Enid Marx worked within the restraints of a limited number of looms, four board-selected colours, and only two yarn types.

Unlike her experience with the London Passenger Transport commissions, Enid Marx found the process of collaboration with manufacturers on Utility Furniture textiles to be a successful one.

The textile patterns were primarily geometric, although Enid Marx introduced some floral motifs after seeking feedback from her charwoman.

In 1929 Enid Marx designed her first commercial book cover, for a monograph on the engravings of Albrecht Durer.

Enid Marx created patterned papers for the Curwen Press and received further commissions from Chatto and Windus.

Enid Marx finished an engraving series called Marco's Animal Alphabet in 1979, although it was not published until after her death.

Enid Marx designed the frame around the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on the British Wilding series of penny, halfpenny, and three-halfpenny stamps, and the 1976 Christmas stamp issue featuring medieval embroidery.

Enid Marx taught a Wednesday design and engraving class at the Ruskin School of Art at Oxford, with colleagues Barnett Freedman, Eric Ravilious and Paul Nash, until 1936.

Enid Marx then considered several teaching positions after the war at Central School of Arts and Crafts and the RCA, before eventually getting hired in 1947 at Gravesend School of Art, teaching creative design for fabric printing.

Between 1951 and 1955 Enid Marx taught design at Maidstone College of Art in Kent and between 1955 and 1957 she taught embroidery at Bromley College of Art.

Enid Marx was appointed head of Textiles, Dress and Ceramics at Croydon College of Art in 1960 and in 1965, she retired from her full-time position to become a guest lecturer in textile history.

Enid Marx became a member of the Society of Wood Engravers in 1925.

Enid Marx was awarded the distinguished status of Royal Designer for Industry by the British Royal Society of Arts in 1944.

Enid Marx was one of the designers chosen to exhibit in the Royal Pavilion at the Festival of Britain in 1951.

Retrospective exhibitions of Enid Marx's work have taken place at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester during 2012 and in London from May to September 2018 at the House of Illustration.