Adshead, (Sylvia) Mary (1904–1995), mural painter and designer, was born on 15 February 1904 at 46 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London, the only child of Stanley Davenport Adshead (1868–1946), architect and academic, and Mary Annie (1874–1960), née Blackie, teacher and housewife, who both had considerable influence on her career and early success. A delicate child, she was educated initially at home by her mother. From 1910 until 1913 the family spent part of each year in ...
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Angus, Margaret MacGregor [Peggy] (1904–1993), designer and artist, was born on 9 November 1904 in Coronel, Chile, the tenth surviving child of David Angus (1855–1926), railway engineer, and his wife, Mary, née Wilson (1860–1939), a former teacher. Her parents were originally from Scotland...
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Geoffrey Beard
Artari, Giuseppe (1692/1700–1769), stuccoist, was one of the most accomplished craftsmen to work in England in the early to mid-eighteenth century. Born at Arogno, near Lugano, Switzerland, he was probably the son of Giovanni Battista Artari (b. 1664), a stuccoist. The evidence of ...
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Laura Ashley (1925–1985) by Philip Sayer, early 1980s © Philip Sayer; collection National Portrait Gallery, London
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Emlyn Hooson
revised
Ashley [née Mountney], Laura (1925–1985), dress designer and interior decorator, was born on 7 September 1925 at Dowlais, near Merthyr Tudful, south Wales, the eldest of the four children (two daughters and two sons) of Stanley Lewis Mountney, a civil servant, of ...
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Thompson Cooper
revised by Anne Pimlott Baker
Baker, William [name in religion Anselm] (1833–1885), heraldic artist and mural painter, was born in Birmingham on 23 January 1833, the son of Thomas Baker, a coach painter. He appears to have worked as a gun-stocker, and he learned to paint and draw at the ...
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Bernard, Oliver Percy (1881–1939), architect and designer, was born on 8 April 1881 at 2 Box Villas, Danby Street, Camberwell, London, the younger son (there were no daughters) of Charles Bernard (formerly Charles West; d. 1894), theatrical manager of Scottish descent, and his wife, ...
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Braddell [née Busse], Dorothy Adelaide (1889–1981), designer and decorative artist, was born at 129 Inverness Terrace, Paddington, London, on 30 June 1889, the daughter of Jacob Levine Busse, stockbroker, and his wife, Annie Leonie Stiebel. After attending Miss Manville's school and King's College, London...
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Alan Powers
Chermayeff [formerly Issakovitch], Sergius Ivan [Serge] (1900–1996), designer and architect, was born Sergius Ivanovich Issakovitch in Grozny, Chechnya, Russia (though at the time of his naturalization as a British subject he gave his birth place as Odessa), on 8 October 1900, the only son and younger child of ...
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Richard Davenport-Hines
Colefax [née Halsey], Sibyl Sophie Julia, Lady Colefax (1874–1950), hostess and interior decorator, was born on 4 December 1874, at The Poplars, Wimbledon Common, Surrey (the house of her uncle, Walter Bagehot). She was the third but only surviving daughter (and fifth and last child) of ...
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Megan Aldrich
Crace family (per. c. 1725–c. 1900), interior decorators, came to prominence with Edward Crace (1725–1799), who was born at 40 Rochester Row, London, the son of Thomas Crace (c.1690–1774), a coach-maker of yeoman descent who was trading from ...
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Crace, Frederick (1779–1859), interior decorator and collector of maps and prints, was born on 3 June 1779 at Park Row, Greenwich, the eldest son of John Crace (1753–1819) [see under Crace family (per. c. 1725-c. 1900)], interior decorator and cabinet-maker, and his second wife, ...
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Frederick Crace (1779–1859) by Frederick Henry Crace, c. 1830 private collection; © reserved in the photograph
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Crace, John Dibblee (1838–1919), interior decorator and author, was born on 19 January 1838 at 14 (later renumbered 38) Wigmore Street, Cavendish Square, London, the eldest of eleven surviving children of John Gregory Crace (1809–1889), interior decorator and author, and his wife, Sarah Jane Hine Langley (1815–1894)...
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Crace, John Gregory (1809–1889), interior decorator and author, was born on 26 May 1809 at 34 Curzon Street, London, the elder of two surviving sons of Frederick Crace (1779–1859), interior decorator and collector, and his wife, Augusta Harrop Gregory (1783/4–1827), the daughter of ...
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Hans Nathan Feibusch (1898–1998) self-portrait, c. 1951 © The Werthwhile Foundation; Tate, London, 2004
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Paul Foster
Feibusch, Hans Nathan (1898–1998), mural painter, was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on 15 August 1898, the elder son of assimilated Jewish parents, Carl Feibusch (d. 1929), dental surgeon, and his wife, Marianne, née Ickelheimer, an amateur painter. He received a classical education and saw military service on the Russian front (1916–18). Following the war he briefly pursued medical studies, but then turned to painting and studied in ...
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Fowler, John Beresford (1906–1977), interior decorator, was born on 20 June 1906 at the Old Mill House, Lingfield, Surrey, the son of Robert Richard Fowler and his wife, Blanche Beresford, née Forster. His father was clerk of the course at the fashionable Edwardian race course at ...
