#peggy angus
Peggy Angus “A tile mural for Brussels World Fair seen in situ, 1958″
“So why is it that so few people know about her? “Like Ravilious, she is part of a generation that was overlooked from the 60s on, when tastes changed. They’re only now coming back into fashion. A lot of her work was done for private clients, which kept it out of sight. But like lots of women, she has also been written out of history – literally. Her husband [the architecture writer JM Richards] doesn’t even mention her in his memoir.” As Russell notes in his book, male architects were content to use women artists to decorate their buildings, but this didn’t mean they were going to share the credit for a design’s success. In 1958, Angus designed a 50ft-long futuristic tile mural for the British section of the Brussels World Fair. Yet she was not invited to the opening ceremony and had to travel to Belgium to see it in situ at her own cost.”
This quote is from a great article on the Guardian website today written by Rachel Cooke about little known British designer and artist Peggy Angus. It is always good to find out more about the female designers from design history past, especially ones who have come close to being forgotten. It is something I have found very common while researching Mid-Century Modern, information is often sparse and their work can be much harder to track down. Which is a real shame. The mural pictured above is really quite something, I wish there were more photos, as it feels a pity to only see it in black and white the from one angle. It reminds me a bit of the colourful and abstract work that Eduardo Paolozzi (who I’m a big fan of at the moment) would do in the 1960s and beyond.
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