Gay designer’s visit to Compton Verney inspires new exhibition
- midlandsrainbow
- Jul 7
- 3 min read
Pioneering painter and designer, Enid Marx is set to be honoured with a new exhibition at Compton Verney. The country house in Warwickshire was being transformed into an art gallery when Enid Marx visited in 1995. Inspired by the visit, Enid chose to donate the English folk art collection she had built over decades with her lifelong partner, British historian, Margaret Lambert, to Compton Verney.
More than 25 years later, that gift will become the basis of the first major exhibition dedicated to Enid Marx. The Pattern of Life: Enid Marx and Modern British Design will explore the life and work of the artist; bringing together loans from the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Library, and the Crafts Study Centre, alongside objects already housed at Compton Verney.
Senior curator Oli McCall said: "Enid Marx visited Compton Verney in 1995. The house was being transformed into an art gallery, and [Enid] chose to donate the collection of popular art she had lovingly assembled with Margaret Lambert.
"That remarkable collection has delighted visitors ever since, making Compton Verney the perfect venue for this exhibition.
"Since then, this treasure-trove of objects with which Marx and Lambert lived, and which inspired Marx's design work in many ways, has delighted audiences here, making Compton Verney the perfect venue for this ground-breaking exhibition.”
The exhibition plans reunites many of the personal items Marx chose to leave to the gallery following her visit, including textiles, folk art, and even a handmade valentine's card exchanged between Marx and Lambert.
Enid ‘Marco’ Marx is considered by the gallery to be one of the country’s most influential yet overlooked artists. She is best known for her industrial textile designs including the iconic fabric seating patterns seen on the London Underground, and she became the first female engraver to be designation as a Royal Designer for Industry (the UK’s highest design accolade). Enid was a versatile artist whose work spanned industrial design to the visual arts; her work could be seen in wrapping paper, stamps, Christmas cards, textiles, and book design.
From the late 1930s, Enid alongside her partner Margaret began collecting popular ephemera, which became the basis for a book entitled When Victoria Began to Reign (1937).
In 1951, the pair published English Popular Art. In the book’s introduction, they defined their subject as: “the art which ordinary people have, from time immemorial, introduced into their everyday lives, sometimes making it themselves, at others imposing their tastes on the product of the craftsmen or of the machine".
Enid lived and worked with the historian Margaret Lambert for 50 years, and their collection of popular art was first put on display at Compton Verney in 2004.
The new exhibition of Marx’s work, has been "underpinned by years of research" by Dr Az Crawford into Marx's life and work, McCall explains. Adding that it will give visitors an "unparalleled insight into the work of one of the most significant designers in modern British history."
Lead curator, Dr Az Crawford said the exhibition aims to reposition Enid Marx as a major figure in British modernism.
"Marx has long been overlooked as one of Britain's major modernist designers," Crawford said. "This exhibition reconsiders the significance of her work, showing how pattern reflected the personal, social and political concerns of the first half of the twentieth century."
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