Enid Marx

Enid Crystal Dorothy Marx, RDI (20 October 1902 – 18 May 1998), was an English painter and designer, best known for her industrial textile designs for the London Transport Board and the Utility furniture Scheme. Marx was the first female engraver to be designated as a Royal Designer for Industry.

Early life

Born in London to Annie Marie Neuberger and Robert Joseph Marx, Enid Marx was the youngest of three children. She was known familiarly throughout her life as "Marco". She was a distant cousin of Karl Marx.

Her 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.

Her artistic inclinations were fostered from an early age, especially by her older sister Marguerite who lived in France for a period. As a young girl, she found pleasure in collecting samples of ribbon from textile shops. She travelled with her family in Europe before the First World War, witnessing the Avant-garde arts movements of the early 20th century.

Education

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. She studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts for a year before moving to the painting school at the Royal College of Art (RCA) in 1922. Her classmates there included Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious, Barbara Hepworth, and Barnett Freedman. As a student, Marx was influenced by Paul Nash, then a tutor at the RCA, who introduced her to publishers and encouraged her avant-garde leanings. Marx failed her Final Diploma Assessment (led by Charles Ricketts) in 1925, and she left the school that year. Her work was judged to be "vulgar", reflecting her interest in popular forms and rejection of the traditional definition of fine arts. Nearly 60 years later, in 1982, the College awarded her an honorary degree.

Career

Marx was a versatile artist whose work spanned industrial design and the visual arts. She valued craft and folk art, and derived inspiration for her work from her collections of vernacular artwork and everyday objects. Although she is best known for her textile and book design, she also designed wrapping paper, stamps, and Christmas cards.

Textile design

In 1925, after leaving school before finishing her degree, Marx went to work for the textile designers Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher at their studio in Hampstead. In 1927 she started her own workshop where she designed and produced block-printed textiles, often making use of naturally-derived dyes instead of new chemical methods. Her work was sold through the Little Gallery, off Sloane Street, and later at Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn's Dunbar Hay gallery. Collectors of her work included the actors Gerald du Maurier and Gertrude Lawrence.

Industrial textiles

In 1937 she was selected by the London Passenger Transport Board to design the moquette seat fabrics for use on the seats of London buses and tube trains. The new seat fabrics were part of a customer-experience centered redesign, spearheaded by Christian Barman and Frank Pick, focusing on interior fabrics and surfaces. The moquettes were designed to very specific standards, with patterns meant to hide wear and dirt but avoid the problem of "dazzle," their term for the potentially nauseating effects of a pattern in motion. Four of Marx's thirteen original designs are known to have been produced as a part of this redesign, including a "shield" pattern that was used in the London Underground for decades. 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 colou''r’.

During the design and production process for these fabrics, Marx expressed displeasure with the manufacturing firms, who took liberties with the designs to conform to manufacturing requirements. Marx believed that time and effort could have been saved if the manufacturers had consulted with her before making the necessary modifications. The pattern used for the seats and interior backdrops was a geometric design in green and red.

In 1943, the furniture designer Gordon Russell invited her to become a member of the Board of Trade Utility furniture Design Advisory Panel, which was tasked with implementing wartime austerity standards in the field of interior and furniture design. She became responsible for its range of textiles, eventually creating over 30 commissioned designs. This work represented a challenge for the designer because the patterns had to be attractive yet simple in design and inexpensive to manufacture. 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, Marx found the process of collaboration with manufacturers on Utility Furniture textiles to be a successful one. The textile patterns were primarily geometric, although Marx also introduced some floral motifs after seeking feedback from her charwoman.

Book design

In 1929 Marx designed her first commercial book cover, for a monograph on the engravings of Albrecht Dürer. She created patterned papers for the Curwen Press and received further commissions from Chatto and Windus. During the Second World War, she began writing and illustrating her own small format children's books, including ''Bulgy the Barrage Balloon'' (1941) and ''The Pigeon Ace''.

After the war Marx designed covers for Penguin Books