Saffron Walden's Fry Art Gallery reopens to the public

Many of the North West Essex artists represented in the gallery - including Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden - worked in fields such as book illustration, furniture, wallpapers, theatre and advertising, as well as producing art which forms the centrepiece of the collection.

The 'Art and Design' exhibition, which will continue throughout the season, showcases objects reflecting the artist's design talents, both from the gallery's collection and borrowed from private sources.

A London Underground poster by Edward Bawden (Image: Fry Art Gallery)

Highlights include two Ravilious-designed dining chairs, upholstered with an Enid Marx fabric design, along with garden benches by both Edward and Richard Bawden and clerical vestments by Lucie and John Aldridge.

Bawden and Ravilious met at the Royal College of Art, and were taught by the artist Paul Nash not to make a distinction between art and design - an ethos they have continued throughout their work.

The enlarged Bawden Room at the gallery now contains display cases enabling the gallery to show smaller items which have previously been difficult to present.

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A second exhibition: 'Interwoven Lives: Marianne Straub, Great Bardfield and Friends' also opens on April 2.

Marianne Straub (1909-1992) was one of the most important commercial designers of the 20th century. 

Cartoons designed for an etched glass screen at St Andrew’s Church, Belchamp St Paul, Essex, by Richard Bawden, behind a clerical cape by Lucie and John Aldridge (Image: Fry Art Gallery)

In the 1950s and 60s she was head of design at Warner & Sons in Braintree, and was part of Great Bardfield's artistic community.

Fabrics designed by Straub were produced in large quantities for many years. The exhibition also includes a scrapbook in which Straub collected greeting cards from her friends in the world of art and design, as well as work from the permanent collection and items on loan. 

Mary Schoeser will give a lecture on Marianne Straub at the Friends' Meeting House in Saffron Walden High Street at 7.30pm on June 9.

The Interwoven Lives exhibition continues in the Gibson Room at the Fry Art Gallery until July 2, and will be followed from July 8 by British Neo-Romantics, arranged in conjunction with the Lightbox Gallery in Woking.