Omega watch

Wednesday, 1st July 2009

Beyond Bloomsbury: Designs of the Omega Workshops 1913–19
Courtauld Institute, until 20 September

‘It is time that the spirit of fun was introduced into furniture and into fabrics,’ proclaimed Roger Fry in 1913. ‘We have suffered too long from the dull and the stupidly serious.’ To this end he led a band of like-minded artists in the hand-production of decorative items for the home, operating from a three-storey townhouse at 33 Fitzroy Square that was both workshop and showroom. Among the clients were H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and W.B. Yeats. Among the artists working for Fry were Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Wyndham Lewis and Frederick Etchells, Gaudier-Brzeska and Winifred Gill. Fry insisted on anonymity, and it is now often difficult to disentangle who did what. The Courtauld has made a stimulating selection from its large and distinguished collection of Omega designs, exhibiting them where possible with examples of the actual textiles.

There are many fine things here, including a rug (probably by Royal Wilton) designed by Vanessa Bell for Lady Ian Hamilton in bold fractured lines, much more dynamic than some of the prevailing block and stripe ideas. One of the most beautiful is another rug design in greens, blue-greys and tan, attributed to Bell. Etchells was also a very satisfying designer, with a feeling for line and space that led him towards a career in architecture. Omega aimed to impose a sense of harmony on the muddle of the English interior. (That old debate: the homely versus the aesthetic.) Its chief ambition was to provide — in the words of the prospectus — ‘real artistic invention in the things of daily life’.

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