Mabel Charlotte Alleyne (31 March 1896 – 15 August 1961) was a British
wood-engraver
Wood engraving is a printmaking technique, in which an artist works an image or ''matrix'' of images into a block of wood. Functionally a variety of woodcut, it uses relief printing, where the artist applies ink to the face of the block and pr ...
Society of Wood Engravers
The Society of Wood Engravers (SWE) is a UK-based artists’ exhibiting society, formed in 1920, one of its founder-members being Eric Gill. It was originally restricted to artist-engravers printing with oil-based inks in a press, distinct from ...
.Joanna Selborne, 'The Society of Wood Engravers: the early years' in ''Craft History 1'' (1988), published by Combined Arts.
Biography
Alleyne was born in
Southampton
Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...
in 1896, the daughter and only child of Bouverie Colebrooke Alleyne, part of a wealthy family originally from
Barbados
Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate). ...
, and Ada Clements. She studied at
Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths, University of London, officially the Goldsmiths' College, is a constituent research university of the University of London in England. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by the Wor ...
and the
Royal Academy Schools
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpo ...
. She appears not to have married.
Wood engravings and other artistic output
Alleyne exhibited with the Society of Wood Engravers in 1933, 1936 and 1938. Her wood engravings were reproduced in the
London Mercury
''The London Mercury'' was the name of several periodicals published in London from the 17th to the 20th centuries. The earliest was a newspaper that appeared during the Exclusion Bill crisis; it lasted only 56 issues (1682). (Earlier periodicals ...
; the September 1933 issue reproduced ''Night'', and the July 1934 issue ''Flower Study''. The 4th edition of Beedham's ''Wood Engraving'' (1935) reproduces ''Autumn Rain''.
In 1926 the Saint Loup Press, San Remo, published an edition of 100 copies of ''Nursery Rhymes'', written and illustrated by Alleyne with hand coloured wood engravings. In the 1930s she wrote, illustrated and printed ''The Angry Cheese and Other Queer Fancies''; this was a very
Private Press
Private press publishing, with respect to books, is an endeavor performed by craft-based expert or aspiring artisans, either amateur or professional, who, among other things, print and build books, typically by hand, with emphasis on design, gra ...
production with some 18 wood engravings, some hand coloured. She also presented to her friend Elizabeth Rivers a hand printed illustrated poem entitled ''Ethne''.
She produced a colour dust jacket for '' The Way the World is Going'' (1928) by
lithographs
Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...
and
oil paintings
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...
Mabel Alleyne is a minor figure in the wood engraving revival at the beginning of the twentieth century. She is almost invisible in the literature, and is recorded in the records of the Society of Wood Engravers, and in the credits in the London Mercury, as M. Alleyne rather than Mabel Alleyne.