Bawden Archive

Published: 11/09/2024

A group of our members visited the Higgins recently to explore the Bawden archive with Victoria Partridge.

The session started with a look at the Pilgrim's Progress tapestry that was designed by Bawden to mark the Queen's silver jubilee and the tercentenary of the book's publication. A surprise to us all and to Victoria was that one of our group had been involved in embroidering the tapestry as a member of the Bedford Music and Art Club. She and the others involved spent one thousand hours on the task. It was Bawden's involvement with the tapestry and his friendship with the then curator, Helina Graham, that led him to leave his archive to the Higgins. 

After looking at the tapestry, we were shown a number of items from the archive or in Bawden's words, his "remains". These allowed us to see how he worked towards a final end product as well as his extraordinary versatility. We saw the work he did on wallpaper design, book covers and illustrations, posters, prints of London sites and markets and illustrations of Aesop's fables. What came across was his humour, creativity, attention to detail and flexibility. And, as seen in the photo here, cats were a recurrent feature in his work. 

We all very much enjoyed our visit and felt privileged to go behind the scenes to get to know Bawden's work better. Victoria's knowledge and enthusiasm made for an engaging session and a better understanding of how Bawden created his work. 

Rob Bollington, September 2024.