Viva Brighton Issue #80 October 2019

ART
.............................
the exhibition, we’re trying to capture what it
would have been like, going into the Omega
Workshops in Fitzroy Square. Coming from an
Edwardian world of polite and tasteful things,
and then going through the doors and seeing
the wild designs and fantastic colours. Fry liked
surfaces to be rough and tactile; lumpy paint
and lumpy ceramics. It would have taken quite
a lot of guts for people to have that furniture
in their homes, and to buy Omega clothes and
wear them in the street.”
The workshops were also a source of steady
income for Fry’s artist friends. He invited
them to work three mornings a week, giving
them time and money to carry on with their
own work. Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant
were employed as co-directors and designers
from the outset, with other artists working
on an informal basis, contributing designs for
products including ceramics, textiles, children’s
toys, clothes and furniture.
It was Fry’s intention that the pieces be
available to everyone, but customers came
largely from friends, artists and the cultured
elite. “George Bernard Shaw supported the
workshop from the outset, and Sickert and
Picasso both visited. It was a real hotspot for
people visiting London in that period. It was a
very trendy place to be seen.”
In 1916, Bell and Grant moved from London to
Charleston, furnishing their home with Omega
furniture, textiles and decorations. Whilst
the Workshops themselves were short-lived,
closing in July 1919, Fry’s forward-looking
vision found its most complete expression in
the unlikely setting of a Sussex farmhouse.
“The whole of Charleston is that quintessential
Post-Impressionist house”, concludes Darren.
“The ethos of the Omega Workshops in its
living, breathing state. That’s very much
why we’re doing this exhibition here. It’s like
bringing Omega home.” Lizzie Lower
Post-Impressionist Living: The Omega
Workshops continues until January 2020
charleston.org.uk/omega
Lampstands with geometric decoratIon, designed and
made by the Omega Workshops, 1913-1919.
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Invitation card to an exhibition at the Omega Workshops Ltd by Duncan Grant. Mid-1910s. © The Estate
of Duncan Grant. All rights reserved. DACS 2019 / Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Omega chairs and table in the Dining Room at
Charleston. © The Charleston Trust.
Photograph by Penelope Fewster.
....57....