Rena Gardiner: Artist and Printmaker

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The illustrations in this book are from drawings made directly onto lithographic aluminium plates. They are therefore originals and not reproductions of drawings made on paper.’ With the newly invigorated interest in Rena, an exhibition of her prints and other works is planned at Durlston Country Park in March and Julian’s co-author Martin Andrews, an avid and long-standing collector who spent a day with Rena at Tarrant Monkton in 1993, will be speaking about her work at Leigh village hall in November. It seems the new interest in the work of Rena Gardiner is growing all the time. Recently, we have been exploring the work of Dame Elisabeth Frink, as part of our project to catalogue the Frink collection held at Dorset History Centre. However, Frink’s is not the only collection of artistic material we hold… Rena Gardiner (left) came to Dorset in 1954, taking a cottage in Wareham and travelling to her day job teaching art at Bournemouth School for Girls on a Lambretta. By then she had already illustrated and printed one book and was a consummate printmaker, inspired by the lithograph makers such as John Piper and Eric Ravilious that flourished between the wars. Setting up a makeshift workshop and studio in her garage she continued to make prints and before long was producing her first books, soon outgrowing her garage and precipitating her move to Tarrant Monkton in 1965. The publication of Rena Gardiner: Artist and Printmaker, which includes an exhaustive list of her books, leaflets, cards and prints, has shone a light – albeit belatedly – on this most unsung of Dorset art figures and yet even now she remains something of an enigma. How pleasing. ◗

Inheriting her father’s love of technical drawing and anything mechanical at the age of 17 she went to study graphics and illustration at Kingston School of Art. The primary technique she used was autolithography. This is a process when the drawing is taken from the original sketches and transferred on to clear film and then on to a metal plate. Rena did not work from a completed drawing. She used her judgement to build on the layers of hand mixed colour. This is a quote from one of Rena Gardiner’s guidebooks on Dorset. Rena Gardiner had a unique and very distinctive style of illustrating. She was best known for her guidebooks and designed and crafted the whole process, by hand, from the initial sketches through to the completed book. Looking at them now her illustrations are very typical of the period, however the handmade, artisan approach to her work has recently experienced a resurgence. She bridged the gap between studio print and commercial production.

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Her next book was a move away from the ‘fine art press’ world of limited editions. It was a book of drawings of Corfe Castle with, as she put it, ‘enough text to keep the drawings apart’. It was the book that so inspired Martin Andrews. This time she printed 750 copies – but as before, she produced the whole book by herself from start to finish. This was her artistic conscience at work. Years later, when asked why she had never taken on an assistant, she simply replied: ‘It wouldn’t be my own work.’ As Rena Gardiner was a printer and lithographer by profession, The Baguette Press have decided to print the books lithographically, rather than the cheaper option of digital printing, to keep it in line with the spirit of Rena’s work. Each book would have taken her about two years to complete from start to finish,’ explains Julian Francis, co-author with Martin Andrews of Rena Gardiner: Artist and Printmaker (Little Toller Books). ‘She loved doing the research and wrote the text herself, as well as the drawings, the printing, collating all the paper, which was a huge undertaking, and then printing the books by hand. She would sometimes call on a few friends to help, but she was doing print runs of 10,000 to 15,000 for some of them, it was physically very demanding.’ Several more cathedrals now commissioned books from her, among them Norwich, Rochester, Ely and Canterbury; and then the National Trust, having been initially reluctant to make use of Rena’s talent, realised what they were missing, and for the next twenty years she published an astonishing succession of beautifully-made books for them. Rena Gardiner was born in Epsom, where her father was an electrical engineer but also a skilled technical artist. In 1946 she enrolled at nearby Kingston School of Art to study graphics. During her time there she took the opportunity to visit as many exhibitions as she could and found herself inspired not by traditional art forms such as painting and etching but by much more modern artists and their techniques.She discovered the works of Edmund Bawden, John Piper and Eric Ravilious all of whom practiced lithography. She also discovered Kenneth Clark’s project Recording Britain and works by then unfashionable early landscape artists such as John Sell Cotman and Thomas Girtin.

We’ll never know, but there are tantalising glimpses of Rena’s character throughout her work, such as in the enormous 10ft x 30ft mural made for Bournemouth School for Girls in 1960/61 to commemorate the original school buildings at the Lansdowne ahead of its move to a purpose-built campus close to Castle Lane. Lessons are captured in full swing, there’s an art class on the balcony, a school photograph being taken… and Rena includes herself astride her red scooter. Rena Gardiner’s utterly charming guidebook to Cotehele, first published by the National Trust in 1973, describes the ‘Prospect Tower’ as looking like a church tower from a distance whereas, she continues, it is ‘nothing more than a folly’. Nothing more than a folly??? This casual comment can be forgiven when one sees her distinctive and delightful illustrations – she was clearly a fan of the landmark. Gardiner’s text describes another alleged function of the tower: that it was used to signal between Cotehele and Maker church on the Mount Edgcumbe estate (which is feasible – the two towers have sight of each other). Cotehele stands just on the Cornwall side of the river Tamar that forms the boundary with Devon. The estate was the ancient seat of the Edgcumbes, but by the 18th century it was a secondary residence, with the family preferring nearby Mount Edgcumbe, overlooking Plymouth Sound. On high ground above the house at Cotehele stands this solitary three-sided tower, of which little seems to be known. No inscriptions give even a hint of its history. Gardiner’s work ranged widely, but Dorset was her muse. Five years before her move to Tarrant Monkton, Gardiner created the book Portrait of Dorset: The South East, and published it herself, taking three years to make the lithographs, write and set the text, producing just thirty copies. The publisher Design For Today has just reissued Portrait of Dorset in a facsimile edition, with an added, useful ‘appreciation’ of Gardiner which includes a brief biography and a summary of her working methods, written by Joe Pearson, the publisher.Her archive held at Dorset History Centre reveals not only examples of her work but also the whole process from the original sketches, the drawings on film, the metal plates and the linocuts. We also have examples of the completed books in Local studies. Her books are now highly sought after and collector’s items. All of which goes to show, if only by attaching prices to it, just how much her highly individual work is now being appreciated by those in the know, thanks in no small part to the success of the book. The cover of Portrait of Dorset (1960), only thirty numbered copies and a few additional specimen copies were produced As a boy of eleven in 1963, I first encountered the work of Rena Gardiner when, passionate about the world of knights and castles, I bought her guide to Corfe Castle – excited and inspired by the colour and imagination of her illustrations which contrasted so much with the dull text and grey boring halftones of most guidebooks of the time. I became a keen collector of her books, and years later, in August 1993, I went to visit Rena Gardiner in her home and workshop in Tarrant Monkton and spent the day with her, recording a first-hand account of her printing techniques, artistic influences, her experiences at art school and her teaching career, and taking photographs of her at work. Much of the biographical and technical detail in the following text is taken from the tape recordings made on that day and therefore reflect her own words. She was kind and welcoming, always keen to talk about her books, surprised but delighted by my interest and attention; modest about her achievements but strong in her passion and belief in her work. Rena Gardiner’s guidebooks to historic places, buildings and the countryside have an idiosyncratic style that is unique in post-war British art. Enthusiasts for her work and admirers of her lithographic techniques have avidly collected her books. In recent years a new generation of artists and printmakers have discovered her work, helping to spread the word and foster the recognition she so richly deserves. Rena followed on in the great tradition of British topographic artists and from the rich era of autolithography of the 1940s and 50s, creating her own very individual and personal visual style. Independent, self-reliant, Rena dedicated her life to the writing, illustrating and printing of her books, working alone in her thatched cottage in the heart of Dorset. An unsung heroine of printmaking, uninterested in publicity or fame, she created a body of work that is instantly recognisable for its exuberant use of colour and texture. Her technique was completely her own, and bridged the gap between the studio print and commercial production – between the fine art of the private press and mainstream publishing. Because of the hand-crafted nature of her process, no two books of hers are the same.

One of the earliest known views dates from 1814 when J.M.W. Turner included it in a sketch of Cotehele. Guidebooks throughout the 19th century refer to the tower (which doesn’t seem to have a name) and the ‘most extensive and finely varied view’ which could be obtained from the top. It is simply ‘tower’ on early Ordnance Survey maps, but is known today as the Prospect Tower.From then on, Rena had enough confidence and skill to work on her own, and she rarely collaborated again. Her next project was the previously mentioned Dorset trilogy, and by now she was so busy with her printing work that she decided that she had to give up her teaching post at BSG. She had outgrown her cottage in Wareham, which was far too small to cope with a printing press and all the paraphernalia that went with it, so she moved to a cottage in Tarrant Monkton which Joy had spotted in the Echo. She adored it, and the last thirty years of her life were spent at The Thatch Cottage, a name which would adorn every book she was to produce from now on.