TEACHERS’ RESOURCE BEYOND BLOOMSBURY DESIGNS OF THE OMEGA WORKSHOPS 1913–19 CONTENTS WELCOME 1 BEYOND BLOOMSBURY: 2 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE OMEGA WORKSHOPS SHOPPING AT THE OMEGA 4 PURE VISUAL MUSIC: 6 MUSICAL THEMES IN BLOOMSBURY AND BEYOND ALPHA TO OMEGA: THE 10 BLOOMSBURY AUTHORS LES ATELIERS OMEGA ET 14 LE POST-IMPRESSIONNISME LEARNING RECOURCE CD 17 Cover: Pamela Design attributed to Duncan Grant, 1913, printed linen Victoria and Albert Museum, London Below: White (three of five colourways) Design attributed to Vanessa Bell, 1913, printed linen Victoria and Albert Museum, London WELCOME The Courtauld Institute of Art runs an exceptional programme of activities suitable for young people, school teachers and members of the public, whatever their age or background. We offer resources which contribute to the understanding, knowledge and enjoyment of art history based upon the world-renowned art collection and the expertise of our students and scholars. The Teachers’ Resouces and Image CDs have proved immensely popular in their first year; my thanks go to all those who have contributed to this success and to those who have given us valuable feedback. In future we hope to extend the range of resources to include material based on Masterpieces in The Courtauld collection which I hope will prove to be both useful and inspiring. With best wishes, Henrietta Hine Head of Public Programmes The Courtauld Institute of Art Somerset House Strand, London WC2R 0RN BEYOND BLOOMSBURY: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE OMEGA WORKSHOPS Image: Four-fold screen with Lily pond design Duncan Grant, 1913-14, Oil on wood 181.6 x 242.4cm Established in 1913 by the painter and Wyndham Lewis, Frederick Etchells, influential art critic Roger Fry, the Omega Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Winifred Workshops were an experimental design Gill – the remarkable young woman collective, whose members included who ran the Workshops from the start of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and other the War until 1916. Fry insisted that the artists of the Bloomsbury Group. designs were produced anonymously, bearing only the Greek letter Ω (Omega) Well ahead of their time, the Omega in a square, which also decorated the Workshops brought the experimental signboard outside 33 Fitzroy Square. language of avant-garde art to domestic design in Edwardian Britain. They were The premises served as a shared working a laboratory of design ideas, creating studio and a showroom where informed a range of objects for the home, from clientele could drop in to make a small rugs and linens to ceramics, furniture purchase, choose to have something and clothing – all boldly coloured with made from a wide range of designs, dynamic abstract patterns. No artist or even commission an entire interior. was allowed to sign their work, and Clients included Virginia Woolf, George everything produced by the Workshops Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, W.B. Yeats bore only the Greek letter Ω (Omega). and E.M. Forster, as well as bohemian high society figures like Lady Ottoline Inspired by contemporary art in Europe, Morrell and Maud Cunard. Fry was also the Omega Workshops created a range adept at bringing visiting intellectual of objects for the home, from rugs and grandees such as Gertrude Stein to the linens to ceramics, furniture and clothing Omega. – all boldly coloured and patterned with dynamic abstract designs. For a short There was no other shop in London while, the Workshops’ premises at 33 like it, where artists and rich patrons Fitzroy Square was the only place to rubbed shoulders and where artists’ shop in London for a ‘Fauve’ shawl, a designs were sold directly to the ‘Post-Impressionist’ chair or a Cubist- consumer. Virginia Woolf recalled the inspired rug. lively atmosphere: ‘There were bright chintzes designed by the young artists; Fry sought to challenge the commercial there were painted tables and painted market in domestic interiors with new chairs; and there was Roger Fry himself and exciting products, and the Omega escorting now Lady So-and-so, now Workshops functioned as a beacon of a business man from Birmingham, opposition to mainstream Edwardian round the rooms and doing his best to culture and aesthetics. As he told a persuade them to buy.’ journalist in 1913: ‘It is time that the spirit of fun was introduced into furniture and into fabrics. We have suffered too long from the dull and the stupidly serious.’ The Workshops managed to stay open during the First World War but eventually closed in 1919. Although it operated for Above: just six years, it saw the creation of an Taken from Omega Workshops Descriptive impressive sequence of thrillingly bold Catalogue, 1914 designs which were well ahead of their time. The Omega Workshops was a limited company, with shareholders, employees and several subcontracted craftsmen producing wares off site for the Omega INTRODUCTION TO THE EXHIBITION ‘brand’ from original designs by the Written by Dr Alexandra Gerstein, Workshops’ artists. At its height they exhibition curator and Curator for included Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Courtauld Gallery. SHOPPING AT THE OMEGA A certain unassuming townhouse at The Omega premises were 33 Fitzroy Square, London, could be comparatively small and inconspicuous. identified as something out of the To shop at the Omega was to enter into ordinary only by exuberant dancing a secret world where one of the delights couples painted into two recesses in was the possibility of meeting with the façade and a cryptic swinging sign the artists and discussing prospective bearing the Greek letter Ω. The house purchases with them. was the shop, gallery, workspace and offices of the Omega Workshops from Department stores such as Whiteleys 1913 to 1919. With no shop window to (est. 1867) and Selfridges (est. 1909) entice customers inside and nothing were staffed by suited salesmen and even to mark the building out as a shop, women, with a reassuring distance from Roger Fry’s group of ‘artist decorators’ the process of production. The gloss relied on reputation and personal of the department store deliberately invitation to sell their goods. obscured the origins of the goods in an impersonal factory, whereas the set-up THE SHOP of the Omega made the handmade At the beginning of the 20th century process of creating central to its appeal department stores were taking over to customers and continued the air of London’s shopping districts with lower, authenticity that Fry promoted. standardised prices, big shop windows and spacious, pristine display spaces THE EXPERIENCE that presented mass-produced goods in There is one place where you can do exotic and appealing ways. In contrast your Christmas shopping in pleasant the Omega Workshops’ founder Roger coolness. That is the Omega Workshops Fry sought to promote ‘the directly in Fitzroy Square… the whole effect expressive quality of the artist’s handling’ as you enter is gayer, brighter, more instead of the ‘deadness of mechanical carnival-like than anything in the big reproduction’. Christmas stores. (Manchester Guardian, 19 December 1913) Virginia Woolf, a regular patron in particular of the clothes designed by the Omega, describes Roger Fry in his overalls ‘escorting now lady so-and-so, now a business man from Birmingham, round the rooms and doing Above: Entrance to 33 Fitzroy Square (Pub. in A.T. Bolton, his best to persuade them to buy’. The Architecture of Robert and James Adam (1758-1794), Country Life, 1922) The service was a personal one. The ground floor showrooms at 33 Fitzroy Left: Omega Signboard Square displayed examples of the type Duncan Grant, 1915, Oil on wood with metal studs, of goods that could be made to order, Victoria and Albert Museum, London altered and adapted to the needs and tastes of the individual purchaser. Prospective clients would be welcomed here to discuss their orders. In this townhouse setting in a residential square the rugs, furniture, ceramics, clothing and toys produced by the Omega artists SHOPPING AT THE OMEGA might have appeared more like domestic Written by Dr Caroline Levitt, visiting objects than items for sale. lecturer at The Courtauld Institute of Art and Joff Whitten. The building was far from pristine and impersonal. It was lived-in, not as a family CURRICULUM LINKS home (the artists all lived elsewhere) Art and Design, Art History, History and other humanities. but as the home of collaborative THE PHILOSOPHY creativity, the birthplace of art objects It was not only in its aesthetic that the with an everyday purpose, signed not Omega differed from department stores. by individual artists but with the Omega Set up originally to provide a place symbol Ω. The space was decorated in where struggling yet promising artists, the bright, lively designs so characteristic such as the unemployed Duncan of the Omega and the Bloomsbury Grant, could earn enough to live as group. well as selling their work, the Omega was a product of Fry’s benevolence. Its On the first floor were two workrooms methods jarred with mass-consumerism and above that were the offices where and profiteering, promoting instead the essential administration of the honest, small-scale business. business was carried out. It was the presence of the dust and mess of Fry was a Quaker and his sense of civic creative activity that, on one level, made responsibility led him to see the Omega the work of the Omega so appealing Workshops as an alternative to actual – as Winifred Gill, a founder member fighting in the Great War, and a way of and eventual manager of the Omega, putting into practice his pacifism. wrote to Duncan Grant in 1966: ‘There are some things more precious than Conscientious objectors, however, hygiene.’ were seen as anything but noble, being shunned by the media and the public.