David Nash Interviewed by Denise Hooker: Full Transcript of the Interview

NATIONAL LIFE STORIES ARTISTS’ LIVES David Nash Interviewed by Denise Hooker C466/32 This transcript is copyright of the British Library Board. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB 020 7412 7404 [email protected] This transcript is accessible via the British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings website. Visit http://sounds.bl.uk for further information about the interview. © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk IMPORTANT Access to this interview and transcript is for private research only. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB 020 7412 7404 [email protected] Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, however no transcript is an exact translation of the spoken word, and this document is intended to be a guide to the original recording, not replace it. Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators ( [email protected] ) © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk The British Library National Life Stories Interview Summary Sheet Title Page Ref no: C466/32 Digitised from cassette originals Collection title: Artists’ Lives Interviewee’s surname: Nash Title: Interviewee’s forename: David Sex: male Occupation: Sculptor Dates: 1945 Dates of recording: 1995.06.07, 1995.06.08, 1995.06.09 Location of interview: Interviewee’s home Name of interviewer: Denise Hooker Type of recorder: Marantz CP430 Recording format: D60 Cassette F numbers of playback cassettes: F4717 - F4728 Total no. of digitised tracks : Mono or stereo: Stereo Additional material: Copyright/Clearance: Full clearance. © The British Library Interviewer’s comments: © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk David Nash Page 1 C466/32 Tape 1 [F4717] Side A [F4717 Side A] [Interview with David Nash at his home on the 7th of June 1995. Interviewer, Denise Hooker.] David can I start by asking you where and when you were born. I was born in Esher in Surrey on November the 14th 1945. And did you have brothers and sisters? I have an older brother who was born in September of 1939. He was born just before the war and I was born just after the war. And I wondered if we could go right back now to your memories of your grandparents. Were you close to them? We saw a lot of both. My mother's father was from New Zealand, I think he was a tailor, they lived in Walton-on-Thames, he and my grandmother, my mother's mother. Very middle-class family, very correct. And my father's parents had lived most of their lives in Wales, my father was born in Newtown. My father's father I think I knew much better than my mother's father; my mother's father died when I was eight or nine. My father's father, Frederick Nash, was a, he went to Manchester University and was a pharmacist, a chemist, and he was a great entrepreneur, and he did things like buying all the army boots from the British Army after the First World War and selling them to the Turkish Army in one day and made a lot of money. So I think he was in his career, three times he was a millionaire, and he lost it all, so, quite a wild entrepreneur. He had a chemist shop in Montgomery, I remember my father taking me there to show it to me, and also to the chemist in Newtown, and he pointed out the room that he was born in, this was when I was about fifteen. My grandfather, the one in Newtown, bought a lot of, or bought a woollen mill, an abandoned woollen mill and converted it into a toothpaste factory, a powder toothpaste, which I think was sold by post, it was a...he got into this mail order, pharmaceutical mail order. And I believe he...he also had a ginger beer factory, we have a bottle with `Nash's Ginger © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk David Nash Page 2 C466/32 Tape 1 [F4717] Side A Beer' embossed on it. He also invented a cure-all tonic. Very successful businesses, successful enough for him to leave his brother, my great-uncle Oswald, in charge of these various little businesses, and he set up in partnership in Regent Street and started a department store which included a picture gallery which actually had at one time Turners and Constables in it, and he at one point in his life actually owned Turner and Constable paintings. So he had quite a good eye for art. What sort of date are we talking about? Oh well, 1918 for the army boots which he sold to the Turkish Army. He did another coup like that with boots I think, or something, other leather goods, but there was a ship strike somewhere en route and all these leather goods rotted, so that deal was an absolute disaster. I think the department store was 1920s, early 1920s. Uncle Oswald was a ne'er-do-well and totally ruined the businesses up in Wales, and my father suffered a serious nervous breakdown, and with that also consequently he...he was swindled by his partner, and he lost the department store. Did your father take over the department store? No, no my father was, in the Twenties I guess, he went to... He was in and out of local schools and private schools like a sort of yo-yo, depending on my grandfather's income, or wealth. There was one time when he had two Daimlers and two chauffeurs, and then they would be gone you see and my father was out of private school again and back into the local school. But then he went to Brighton College on the south coast. Your grandfather? My father. He was the eldest of five sons, so there was my father Charles, then there was Norman who never forgave my father for being older than him, and there was Ronnie and Geoff and John. I've got a little lost now. Were you close to your grandfather, that grandfather? © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk David Nash Page 3 C466/32 Tape 1 [F4717] Side A He was an extraordinary character, and he was always very warm towards us but not in a really...I'm trying to think of, you know, this sort of grandfather image of the sort of embracing, and, he always gave us these bear hugs I remember when we arrived, but he was such an eccentric character it was...I suppose I didn't really fully relate to him. My elder brother, six years older, was always making fun of him, so... What was he like? He was round, he had white hair. This was in north Wales when I knew him. My grandfather bought a big old house here in the Ffestiniog Valley in 1948 for very little money, which included 44 acres of land, very beautiful land, it's got the Cynfal River running through it. There were some semi-detached cottages which were part of this estate and my father bought a pair of them as an evacuee house, this is 1948, because my mother, while my father was in the Army and in the war, moved 19 times during the Second World War and my father was very convinced apparently that we would have a war with the Soviet Union, and I think one of his strategies was to buy this house as an evacuee house for us. He also helped my grandfather financially, because they were very impoverished then. But they had always lived in big houses and they had all this big furniture, and I remember it all being very threadbare, and these silk curtains were very thin and quite raggedy, and he no longer had Turners but he had sort of third rate sort of Turner-like paintings. It was a very, extraordinary, mysterious...it was an enormous house with staircases and passages and rooms, and it just seemed like one was in a dream there, so it was a great place to be fooling around and playing when one was a kid. And all our holidays were spent up in this little cottage, and then every day when it was wet we would go down, if it was wet we would go down to this big house and play there or... Can you describe it? Big black and white house, it's called Pen-y-Mount, big bay windows. I remember there was this hall-way with a grand staircase going up, and dividing to the left and to the right. It just seemed to be endless rooms, but very dilapidated. It had a sense of grandeur but the implied wealth was not really there. © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk David Nash Page 4 C466/32 Tape 1 [F4717] Side A Do you have any particular memories of it, any objects or...? Well yes, there was a First World War revolver that my brother and I were always very keen on playing with. There were swords hanging up on the walls. As I said, these threadbare curtains. There was an amazing billiard room which didn't have any billiard tables in it, but it had a lot of old furniture stored in there and we used to make dens in there and tunnels.

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