Tag: illustration

Designer Desire: Emily Gravett

Montage of Emily Gravett book illustrations

Originally from Brighton and now resident in rural Wales, Emily Gravett is a children’s book author and illustrator.

In 2005, Emily won the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal for her first book, Wolves:

I wrote Wolves while I was at university, and it feels strange looking at it now, knowing that I wrote it without the faintest idea it would change my life.

She won the award for a second time in 2008 with Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears. This was also the year in which she was the official illustrator for the UK’s World Book Day.

A Song of Gladness written by Michael Morpurgo (which Emily illustrated) will be published later this month (April 2021). Prior to this collaboration, she has illustrated only one other author’s work, Cave Baby, by Julia Donaldson. Both Morpurgo and Donaldson have held the post of Children’s Laureate.

Many of Emily’s books are available to purchase on Hive and from Waterstones.

Here’s Emily with Dilys, her mischievous Bedlington Terrier/Whippet cross, one of my favourite dogs on Instagram!

All images Emily Gravett©

 

 
 
 
 
 
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Designer Desire: Lilly Hedley

Montage of Lilly Hedley prints

Lilly Hedley is a printmaker and illustrator who we first discovered on Instagram. She’s based in rural North Wales, a place that inspires much of her work.

Published last year was Our Isles: Poems Celebrating the Art of Rural Trades and Traditions, a book of poems and artwork that she created along with her partner, poet, Angus D. Birditt. She’s been commissioned by clients to create packaging artwork for Shropshire salumi and Formaje cheese shop in Madrid. She also created a beautiful ‘Merlin Bird and Oak Leaves’ lino-print (shown in the montage above) for Merlin Unwin Books.

Not content with being a talented artist, she has a seasonal and sustainable food company and runs a series of supper clubs.

A selection of her work is available from Oriel Davies Contemporary Art Gallery in Newtown, Mid Wales. In addition, you could contact her via her website The gallery is currently showing her and Angus’ work in, Our Isles: An Exhibition Celebrating the Art of Rural Life (currently closed due to lock-down).

She’s scheduled to lead lino-cutting and printmaking workshops at The Good Life Society’s summer camp at the Hawarden Estate in July 2021.

 
 
 
 
 
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Designer Desire: Claude Flight

Montage of Claude Flight linocut designs

London-born Walter Claude Flight (1881-1955) was a pioneer in the linocut art discipline. Before becoming an artist, Flight trained as an engineer, became a librarian, kept bees and was a farmer.

His linocuts are full of colour and movement and illustrate the time’s preoccupation with speed, progress, modernism and the machine age.

Over his career, he produced over 60 limited-edition prints that, on the odd occasion, come up for sale at auction. Examples have sold at Sotherby’s for $20,000+ USD. Goldmark sell official reprints for £250.00. His work is in the permanent collections of the V&A, the British Museum and the National Gallery of Australia.

A couple of his books, namely Lino-cuts, Lino Cutting and Printing, Christmas and Other Feasts and Festivals and Animal, Vegetable or Mineral (shown in the montage above) all command huge prices on second-hand book seller websites.

From 1926, Claude Flight taught a linoleum cut class at the London Grosvenor School of Modern Art in Pimlico, London. His students included Sybil Andrews, Dorrit Black, Eileen Mayo, Cyril Power, Ethel Spowers, Eveline Symes, Lill Tschudi and his partner Edith Lawrence (whom he’d met a few years earlier). This talented lino cut collective became known as The Grosvenor School.

Portrait of Claude Flightcredit

Additional image credits:
Goldmark

Designer Desire: Tomi Ungererer

Montage of Tomi Ungererer illustrations

Tomi Ungererer (1931–2019) was a French born illustrator of children’s books (and some for adults) and posters. His first book was The Mellops Go Flying, about an adventurous family of pigs. The follow-up was entitled The Mellops Go Diving for Treasure, after which more were added to the series.

After leaving his homeland, he has travelled and lived all around the world. He moved to New York in the 1950s where he created work for publications such as The New York Times, Village Voice, Life and Esquire. In 1971, he and his 3rd wife emigrated to rural Nova Scotia, Canada where he became a farmer. In the mid-1970s, they moved again, this time to West Cork in Ireland; they divided their time between here and Strasbourg until his death in 2019.

Much as I love his children’s book illustrations, it’s his hard-hitting political posters that really grab my attention. In his own words:

Posters for me are the most challenging and gratifying exercise. A poster has to act by impact, to catch the eye of a passerby within a few seconds. I would say the poster is more of an art form than most other kinds of advertising.
In the 1960’s I started to make political posters. Two subjects sparked my revulsion and my anger: racial segregation and the War on Vietnam. Later I did posters for other causes such as Amnesty International, liberty of the press, animal rights, ecology, nuclear disarmament and so on.

In 2007, the Tomi Ungerer Museum in his home-town of Strasbourg first opened its doors. Back in 1975, he’d donated a large part of his work and currently, the museum’s collection includes 11,000 of his drawings, as well as 6,500 toys from his personal collection.

As well as being an illustrator, he was a sculptor and architect. He designed a kindergarten in Karlsruhe, Germany which is uniquely shaped like a reclining cat. The front door is its mouth and its tail is a silver slide through which the children can exit.

Portrait of Tomi Ungererercredit

Additional image credits:
Phaidon | Tomi Ungererer