Royal Yacht Brittania

I recently had an email from a lovely lady who is working on the Netflix production of The Crown.
As my mother designed the embroidery which hangs above the Queens bed on the Royal Yacht Britannia back in 1953, they have asked for permission to use the design in the film, and plan to make a replica. I actually have the original watercolour she did, I knew it was somewhere safe ... but the trouble with putting something away in a safe place means it then gets muddled in the brain filing cabinet ... so ensued a turning upside down of all the archiving of my mothers extensive works I have been doing, and of course it was not where it should have been! So it meant an upturning of almost the whole cottage ... But I now have a very organised studio ... but this morning I suddenly remembered where it was, went straight to the right drawer and there it was ...

Though she was commissioned to do the design, it was then given to the Royal School of Needlework to embroider, very finely in silks.

Quoted from here
"The silk embroidered panels were designed and created in 1953 and were the inspiration of Joan Nicholson, a young British designer, chosen by Sir Hugh Casson (HM The Queen’s chosen designer for Britannia’sState Apartments)."

Detail of side panel

Quoted from here  "The Queen wanted the embroidery to remind her of home when she was traveling abroad, with hedgerows, wild flowers and butterflies. Ivory silk from France was chosen for the background and it took several skilled workers many months to complete at the Royal School of Needlework in London. "

I am very proud of her ... a young mother with two small children, I was not around but so glad I still have this precious document, though very delicate and fragile and somewhat faded. It will now be filed in the correct place! Look out for The Crown when it is out (not sure when)

Centre of circular panel

Central panel detail

The embroidery in situ

The embroidery in situ

Moda (Museum of Design and Architecture) and Roger Nicholson

 A couple of weeks ago I had a very exciting and emotional day visiting Moda, Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture which is part of Middlesex University. They have a fantastic archive and amongst that are many wallpaper designs by my father Roger and uncle Robert Nicholson... along with many of their contemporaries of that time ... 1956 - late 1960s.

This body of work was made for Palladio Wallpapers and I remember a lot of the designs being worked on in his studio as a very young child. Some of them were used to cover the walls of our house in Sissinghurst, Kent and when I came across one which I had in my bedroom it was like coming across an old and dear friend, every tendril and break in the ink was familiar, every secret face hidden in amongst the design, we all look so intently at our bedroom walls as children, a sort of half dreamlike place where the wallpaper design takes on a life of it's own full of monsters and faces, movements, and secret places. You can see the design below ... of an intertwining clematis.

The designs were all in old wallpaper sample books kindly brought out by the lady who had got in touch with me from the museum, together with articles of the time from Architectural Reviews, with adverts for the wallpapers drawn by my father ...
Every page turned was thrilling and I found I was able to spot many of his and also of a dear family friend Ted Hughes (not the poet!), Eric Thomas and of my uncle Robert Nicholson.

But a surprise was finding papers designed by my father which I had not seen before! Such a delight to see them and together with the archive I have at home and also the collection at the V&A, I realise that I must do something about bringing his work to the public eye. I am going with Moda to see the collection at the V&A very soon and I am really excited to go into the inner sanctum ... I will report back of course.

I hope to gather more information over the next few weeks and add to this article ... Forgive the iphoneness of the photos!

I am pretty sure this is one of my fathers ... the faces are so like those he drew ....

Detail

Robert Nicholson design

One I had not seen ...

This was my bedroom wallpaper!

Robert Nicholson

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Joan Nicholson Portrait by Jehan Daly

Yesterday evening a small miracle happened .... I was in the garden attempting to pull up weeds as a break from the computer toil of the day, and ... the land line rang. I never use my land line and am always a little suspicious of it when it rings as everyone I know rings me on my mobile these days.

The message was faint but enough to make me curious to call the number back. The number I called was answered by a lovely gentleman, who back in the 1980s had bought a painting at a country house sale. The painting was by Jehan Daly of a Mrs Roger Nicholson, my mother. He found my number from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. He was on a mission to find out who the woman in the portrait was, and I was so excited to see it ... he sent it to me in an email shortly after our conversation. Here it is (above), and it is quite lovely. Jehen Daly was a great family friend of my parents from after the war and he with John Ward and Gordon Davies painted together on various projects and my mother also sat for them. This portrait, though I have never seen it before, is so familiar as I have many sketches of that same pose in my collection, by both Jehan and my father, also oil paintings of her likewise. I know that chair ... it is an old friend ... he was also my sister's godfather and a sweet and gentle man. I have a photo taken by my father of him holding a tabby kitten, black and white, he in ubiquitous tweeds, very of the time ... I am just now rummaging around in the garage to find the old photos so I can scan it in to send to Bill the owner of the painting. I also have an oil painting of Jehan at his easel by my father. 

Then I was ferreting around online to see what there was on Jehan Daly and there is not a great deal but  found this site and went on to type in Roger Nicholson and found this beautiful painting (below) which again I do not remember at all, but would dearly love to know where it is now. I would love it as it is of a period of my father's painting that I particularly love. He was SO good at colour ... exciting, riveting colour ... I remember thinking as a child that the colours he used were entirely a new breed of unknown colour, nothing like the colours I was learning at school ....

It just kept me thinking of these personal things out in the world I have no idea of the places they have settled or the journeys they have undergone to get there, as my father did not exhibit much, only painting for pleasure he was and is relatively unknown. I would love to have the time to bring them both into the public eye but I have so little time. Anyone out there who would love to do this as a labour of love? Any information about paintings by Roger would be gratefully received ... nancy@nancynicholson.co.uk

Now back to the cobwebs and dead mice in the garage!

Later .... found them! so lovely to find so many and smile through these lovely but very stinky old photos and so many slides! Anyway here is Jehan, my mother and father, all taken around that the time of the portrait. Also the others mentioned ...

Jehan Daly with one of John Wards children I think it may be in Folkestone
where the Wards had a flat.

Jehan Daly

Roger Nicholson

Joan Nicholson with same kitten and my sister Naomi

This is the painting my father Roger did of my mother at the same sitting ...

Jehan Day by Roger Nicholson

Granny Ann

Oil painting by Roger Nicholson of my Grandmother Ann

I have been rooting about in the folios where I keep my father Roger Nicholson's loose sketches and paintings, and some flat oil paintings. This one appeared of my grandmother Ann, then in her 70's when I was just a small child of six maybe. She does appear very severe as many women of that generation could be and obviously took the whole process of having her portrait painted by her youngest son very seriously. She had six children in all, my aunts, Olive and Nina, and my uncles, Jack, Jim, Robert and Roger my father. It was Robert and Roger who were the bright young things in the 1950s in the textile world, designing beautiful wallpapers and fabrics. Some seen below which are now in the V&A archives where I put some of them for safe keeping after he died in 1986

Granny Ann ... Things I remember ... her making wonderful sardine sandwiches and battenburg cake for tea in fluted tea cups on a tray ...  I remember allowing me to riffle through her button box for hours and sit beside her in the sunshine outside her front door while the bees bussed about in the furry irises there, how she disapproved of me saying "yeah" as she was so very English and would rather I had said Yes! Though she lived when her children were small in a corrugated iron hut in the Australian outback where she had gone to be with her husband, and found herself bringing up her six children amongst the spiders and huge ants (my father loved telling me stories about the black Joe's and white Joe's and how they would pitch the two ant rivals in battles, as small boys) with the sun shining piercing swords of burning light through the holes in the corrugated iron roof of their hut ....
But when she came back to England with her youngest children she took pride in her Englishness, her soft white complexion which she powdered to enhance which highlighted the fine soft hairs on her cheeks ... She died at 93 I think ... it was a while back now

Furnishing fabric 1951

1951 Furnishing fabric

This Wallpaper was in my sister Naomi's room ...

Emroidered bracelets

Well now it's back to normal  after a jolly Christmas with the boys, but they have both gone back to Berlin where they are forging ahead with their lives with great gusto! Tom my eldest and his lovely girlfriend Marcella dressed up as Joseph and Mary for the Christmas children's service and really were superb at it, so good that one child rushed up to them and exclaimed " I've just been reading about you!" Proud Mother me ...

But now it's back to work again with so much to do ... This year will see a big change in the business, hopefully moving up a few notches with the launch of some new kits, both the printed panels and tapestry kits too, based on some designs my mother did 50 years ago, and the long awaited stitch cards! I have had to lose dear Sarah as she has gone to pastures new with her boyfriend to Sussex and so now will be taking on help with admin and manufacturing so I can at last get on with the new designs and building up the business, ready for the Hatch showcase in London arranged by School for Startups the wonderful but demanding course I am on. So this year will be full on!

I have had a few birthdays to make things for too ... I am finding it a little of a displacement activity too when I should be doing my accounts but all work no play as they say ... These are little felt embroidered bracelets, quite traditional I think but very satisfying to do. 

Having just begun teaching at Hoop for the new year too, a six week hand embroidery course which we began today and which will culminate in a sampler which I still have to design! News to come on that ... 

Ah much to do and post Christmas sit ups only a part of it!

Tom and Marcella doing the Nativity so well with Charlotte's donkeys
and Biddy suffering Christmas humiliation.

Madonna

Madonna and Child

Detail

Detail of Infant Jesus

This is another of those treasured possessions made by my mother in her student days, so, late 30s/40s and now very fragile, it fades every year even though I keep it out of the light. The thread has just disappeared in places, but her hand is very familiar, in the couching and split stitch used on the hands, very much in the medieval tradition, little scraps she had around, some of which I still have the remains of somewhere. I know this may have been more appropriate to post at Christmas but I am just giving you something lovely for now as I am off to school tomorrow, see here http://www.schoolforcreativestartups.com/

and not sure when I will get time over the next three days which is the first, rather scarily named "BOOT CAMP" which makes me visualise mud and being out of breath and feeling rather awkward in over sized and unflattering khaki ... and which I am hoping is in reality sitting in a lecture theatre and meeting some other entrepreneurs, and learning lots of new stuff about business. But stupidly worried about what to wear and whether my bag is big enough for the "quiet snacks" which are required for the day! Just hope I find a chum quickly ... oh!