Rena Gardiner: Artist and Printmaker

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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.’

I’ve not been told this but I suspect she didn’t suffer fools well,’ he says. ‘She was not naturally gregarious and did not participate in village life at Tarrant Monkton of drinks and dinner parties. She would though, if asked, gladly help out with cards to be sold for church funds, but generally she just got on with her work and saw the small circle of friends she knew from her days as a teacher.’ 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 the mid- 1950s through to the 1980s, Gardiner produced some of the most imaginative and lively lithographs and books. Initially her books were self-published, but then The National Trust commissioned her to produce guidebooks to some of their properties. This allowed her to become a full time illustrator and artist in later life. In the main her subject matter was topographical and she had an absorbing interest in architecture and, above all Dorset.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. Originally written, drawn, lithographed and bound for friends in 1960 in an edition of only 30, ‘Portrait of Dorset: The South-east’ by the printmaker, author and artist Rena Gardiner is just-published in a brand new edition by Design For Today. Read an excerpt below. 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.’ 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… With more space in which to work if not live, within five years she had given up teaching and was focussing all her efforts on The Workshop Press producing books for clients including the National Trust. She shied away from publicity, although articles about her work did appear from time to time, had little interest in critical acclaim and not much more in financial dividends. She wanted the guidebooks to do well, they paid the bills, but the work was its own reward.

The lithographs in Portrait of Dorset have primacy over the words. Rena Gardiner wrote the text herself, as she did throughout her career, for commissions which included work for the National Trust, but she had no real interest in typography – the words serve the purpose of accompanying the art and have no intrinsic beauty in themselves, but still, she used them to convey her opinions. Bere Regis, she tells us, is a ‘dull place’. She is never taken in by the view alone. Too many cottages, she writes, ‘remain rural slums.’ It’s clear too that her sympathies lie with the labourers of Tolpuddle, transported to Australia for their membership of a Trades Union and agitating for better wages when they were ‘virtually slaves of the soil and the landowner.’ 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.

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However, perhaps her purest artistic expressions are to be found in the work she did entirely for her own reasons. 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.’ The mural for Bournemouth School for Girls contains many fascinating details: Rena’s motor scooter can be seen between the main buildings, and she herself is taking an art class on a balcony. 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. 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.

The books were her main source of income after she gave up teaching so to that extent they were a commercial operation – incredibly time consuming as it was, that was how she made her living. But she was a terrifically talented artist in several media and if anything the time the books took to produce probably prevented her from exploring her art in other ways. 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.’ 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. 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. 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.Rena Gardiner 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.