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Rena Gardiner: Artist and Printmaker

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In 2013 I was also invited to meet a number of Rena’s former pupils at a meeting of the Leamington College Association (formerly Leamington College Old Girls) who were able to recall Rena’s early teaching days at their school. 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. 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.

Moving to Bournemouth School for Girls, she rented a cottage at Wareham, Dorset, and set up a basic printing press using an old mangle. On this she produced her first illustrated book on Dorset in 1960. Her technique meant that none of the limited edition of just 30 copies was identical. We did the book to raise Rena’s artistic profile in the hope she might gain the recognition she appeared to have little interest in during her lifetime,’ says Julian. ‘Up until now the interest in her work has largely been a few nerdy collectors who happened upon it and fell in love with it, as I did when I first came to Dorset in 1980. I’ve collected her books ever since, but where there used to be 30 or 40 books readily available online at any one time, today there are only nine. So I think the book and the publicity surrounding can take some responsibility for that and it’s no bad thing as it is bringing Rena Gardiner’s fantastic work to a wider audience.’ This required her to put on a dress and hat in which she felt most awkward; returning home she was relieved to don her normal practical attire of trousers and polo shirt,’ notes Julian in his text for the book. Those guidebooks, there are about 40 in all, have been collected by enthusiasts such as Julian for many years, but since the publication of the book – already into its second print – things have started to change. Rena Gardiner’s work rarely comes up at public auction so a sale this summer in Crewkerne attracted a great deal of attention. After leaving college Rena taught at a school in Lemmington Spa, it was during this period that she experimented with making her first lithographic book, Royal Leamington Spa (1954), printing and binding all 33 copies herself. Later that year she moved to Dorset to teach in Bournemouth, and took up residence in an eighteenth century cottage in Wareham with a garage that could be used as a print workshop.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).

Not only did she do some lovely oil paintings and watercolours, but pastels as well. There are some wonderful drawings she made in researching the books, particularly of the architecture, and the illustrated notebooks she made on holiday as well. Sometimes the images she painted were from the same drawings she’d previously made prints from so they’re not always entirely original and had she had more time maybe she would have taken a different approach.’ Rena fitting a lithographic printing plate onto the press at home in Tarrant Monkton. Photo by Martin Andrews in 1993, used courtesy of Little Toller Books This first book on the artist and printmaker Rena Gardiner (1929–1999) is long overdue. Her guidebooks to historic places, buildings and the countryside have an idiosyncratic style that is unique in post-war British art. Her principal achievement was some 45 books, all of which she wrote, illustrated and printed herself, and of which no two copies are the same. But her legacy also includes paintings, pastels and linocut prints. Her collectors and admirers are many, and in recent years a new generation of artists and printmakers have discovered her work, helping to spread the word and foster the recognition she merits. The cover of Portrait of Dorset (1960), only thirty numbered copies and a few additional specimen copies were produced

Rena Gardiner

I love the little vignettes that she has included in the BSG mural, they show a different side to her that’s also in the work she did for children’s books. I wanted this side to come out in our book so we’ve included a board game she designed for a leaflet and a puzzle inspired by Lindisfarne – there’s a more playful side of her on show, which is nice to see and I wish there was more of it. There’s also a wonderful drawing of the sculpture of Eve by Gislebertus that shows she was a very accomplished draughtsman as well. The original diary is painted in gouache, with some pen and ink details. This hardcover edition aims to recreate the original diary as closely as possible. It has been lithographically printed to the same size as the original, on G.F. Smith paper. This edition also comes with extra added treats. Originally hand-printed and bound for friends in an edition of just 30, Rena Gardiner’s ‘Portrait of Dorset’ has recently been reissued by Design For Today. It is rightly considered to be her masterpiece, writes Jon Woolcott. 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 reputation continues to grow, with several exhibitions in recent years, particularly at National Trust properties. Further reading

In 1960 she produced her first book on Dorset: Portrait of Dorset, drawing directly on to the lithographic plates, and experimenting with texture. She applied colour instinctively as the plates were being printed – no two books were the same. She produced 30 numbered copies.

Rena Gardiner was a print maker whose work has largely gone unnoticed. From her cottage in Dorset she illustrated and produced guidebooks to historic places, buildings and the countryside. Little Toller have just published the first long overdue book on her, which includes nearly 200 illustrations from her books and prints, many which have not been seen in print before. 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. To be precise, little seems to be factually known, for there are plenty of tales and taradiddles about the tower. All that Historic England has to say about the grade II* listed building is that it is ‘probably late 18th century’, which seems about right, but does rather destroy the first oft-told tale in which the ‘family watched the Armada sail up the channel’ from the top of the tower in 1588. Rena Gardiner’s view of the tower from the gorgeous graphic guidebook she produced in 1973.

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.Cotehele was the first property to be accepted in lieu of death duties by the newly-created National Land Fund in 1947, and was passed to the National Trust. The tower is just one of the many attractions of the Cotehele estate. Rena Gardiner’s overview of Cotehele from the 1973 guidebook produced for the National Trust. That she chose to make her living so remotely, and as her biographers Julian Francis and Martin Andrews have pointed out, that she was so uninterested in publicity, meant that her sudden death in 1999 at the age of seventy, was practically unmarked. To this one might add that she was a woman, in an age of the (male) artist as star.

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