On my bookshelf - Museums Association

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On my bookshelf

Victoria Partridge selects Edward Bawden: A Retrospective Survey by Justin Howes
Victoria Partridge
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“I will just check with Justin” is a phrase I say at least weekly. Justin is Justin Howes, the typographer and historian who, in 1988 (aged 25), wrote this book on Edward Bawden, which catalogues the gift of nearly 3,000 works given by the 20th-century artist and designer to the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery in Bedford between 1981 and his death in 1989.

The book has made my working life a pleasure. The information it contains is amazingly detailed. Bawden himself was astounded at how much Justin had managed to “dig up”, but it is also so much nicer to flick through than a database.

Books on Bawden do tend to be beautifully designed and this one is no exception – it has a dust jacket made from one of the pattern papers Bawden designed for the Curwen Press and a simple sticker in elegant grey announcing its contents in a well-chosen typeface.

In museums, we all often wish we could pick the brains of long-dead artists. Justin asked Bawden all the questions I would want to ask him. Bawden suggested Justin for the task of cataloguing his gift, writing that he had a hunch that “he’d turn to pure gold & be tremendously helpful to the gallery” – how right he was.

Victoria Partridge is the keeper of fine and decorative art at the Higgins Art Gallery & Museum, Bedford



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