Top Marx

I've had this little book for years, and am very fond of it (it's an excellent selection, as well as being a pleasure to handle), but it wasn't until I dropped in on the Enid Marx exhibition at the House of Illustration on Granary Square that I realised the cover design is one of hers. Marx, best known for her classic London Underground textiles, also, among many other things, designed the jackets for Chatto & Windus's Zodiac Books and Phoenix Library (and many another book, including several King Penguins).

  One of the prodigiously talented Royal College of Art generation that included Ravilious and Bawden, she was versatile and prolific as well as gifted. Rather amazingly, at the RCA, Sir Frank Short banned her from his wood engraving classes on the grounds that she couldn't draw, but Ravilious used to let her in to the studio after hours to engrave with him. Marx worked all her long life as painter, printmaker, textile designer and anything else that came her way. She even designed stamps, including a set for Christmas 1976 based on Opus Anglicanum embroideries. All her work has the vigour, exuberance and strong sense of pattern so characteristic of her generation, and she was especially fascinated by animals and fish and by English folk art (she co-created the Batsford volume on English Popular Art). This small but wide-ranging exhibition, full of delightful things, exudes a very English kind of good cheer, and is more than likely to leave you with a smile on your face.