Rena Gardiner: Artist and Printmaker

Product Information

A guide book to Corfe Castle came out in 1963. A copy was seen by a Canon of Salisbury Cathedral who proposed she illustrate a new guidebook for that building. She printed 3000 copies of this in 1964, which in turn led to a similar commission for St Georges Chapel Windsor in 1966. Further self-published books on other cathedrals and churches followed. 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.

Several more cathedrals now commissioned books from her, among them Norwich, Rochester, Ely and Canterbury; and then the National Trust, having been initially reluctant to make use of Rena’s talent, realised what they were missing, and for the next twenty years she published an astonishing succession of beautifully-made books for them. 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.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. With the publication of this celebration of Rena Gardiner’s work, we hope to draw attention to her considerable contribution to lithographic illustration whilst simultaneously shining a light on the broader aspects of her legacy as an artist – her paintings, pastels and linocut prints. None of this has been published before. Much of it was thought to have been lost after the sale of her estate and clearance of her studio following her death in 1999. Thankfully, during the research for this book a considerable body of her work was discovered in private hands and the archives of the National Trust at Cotehele in Cornwall. Its inclusion only serves to underline her achievement. As Rena Gardiner was a printer and lithographer by profession, The Baguette Press have decided to print the books lithographically, rather than the cheaper option of digital printing, to keep it in line with the spirit of Rena’s work.

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. Her reputation continues to grow, with several exhibitions in recent years, particularly at National Trust properties. Further readingEach book would have taken her about two years to complete from start to finish,’ explains Julian Francis, co-author with Martin Andrews of Rena Gardiner: Artist and Printmaker (Little Toller Books). ‘She loved doing the research and wrote the text herself, as well as the drawings, the printing, collating all the paper, which was a huge undertaking, and then printing the books by hand. She would sometimes call on a few friends to help, but she was doing print runs of 10,000 to 15,000 for some of them, it was physically very demanding.’ In 1970, Rena gave up her teaching job and dedicated all her time to print making over the course of the next 20 years she designed and printed scores of topographical guide books All of these were printed at home on her own presses, without traditional publishers or other outside help. What she did was unique, and blurred the lines between art, illustration, printmaking and publishing. This is the first book to be published on the work of Rena Gardiner. The project was initiated by Julian Francis who has remained the motivating force and without whom the book would not exist. 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. 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.’

During the 1950s, she concentrated on her teaching, although her colleague and lifelong friend Joy Cross noticed that she could not stop herself drawing or sketching in any spare moment. When the school moved in 1960 from their old Victorian buildings to a new campus on Castle Lane, it was decided that Rena would paint a mural of the old school on the vestibule wall in the new one. It took her the best part of the Christmas Term of 1959 – Joy Cross remembers that the Head gave her a lighter timetable – and it is enormous: about ten feet high and thirty feet long. It teems with life. The grounds are full of children playing, apart from a group posing for a photograph, and even the windows of the school buildings reveal lessons going on: Joy is taking a history lesson and Rena herself has an art class on a balcony. 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. Gardiner then took a book illustration course, and found that could well be her forte. However, she decided not to risk trying to earn a living from illustration and became a teacher, working on book illustrations in her spare time. During her first job at Leamington College for Girls, she created her debut book, Royal Leamington Spa (1954), printing and binding all the copies herself. 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.’ 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.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.’ 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. Rena Gardiner (left) 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. 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.’