Volume Six of this 10 volume set has the following contents:
VOLUME SIX: Treasures won from the earth’s crust – The romance of coal, iron and steel; Treasures won from the earth’s crust – Metals that serve us in a hundred ways; magnetism and electricity – a great discovery and its many developments; Famous inventions and how they were evolved – What master minds have done for the good of man; Services we maintain for the common good – the work they do and how it is carried out; The world and its work – The story of some great industries; The world and its work – Agriculture – producing food from the land
Most of this volume is photographs with few illustrations. But there are some interesting pieces as can be seen above. Terence Tenison Cuneo CVO OBE RGI FGRA (1 November 1907 – 3 January 1996) needs no introduction from me!
Cowell, who I mentioned in more detail in this article, seems to have been a very competent technical illustrator. Further down this article we have another technical drawing.
This is the same Ellis Silas mentioned in Volume Four but this time in colour. And for good measure here’s a later illustration in this particular volume by him.
Clifford Ambler’s work also appeared in Volume Five, but I loved this colour image of clothing through the centuries, so had to share it. The figurework is so competent and three dimensional.
With the image above (page 163) and the one below (page 255) we get more of the distinctive art by George Horace Davis, who was born in London in 1881 and died in 1963. Jeremy Briggs has written a lovely biographical article here Davis’ work also appeared in Volume Five, and here I wanted to show the two fascinating images – the first about dynamos and the second about “the electric eye”! Here’s an article on his cutaways – for which I think he is best remembered today.
There are three cutaways – which appear to be from something called “Farm Mechanisation” – the one above, a combine harvester, plus there are a pick-up baler and a modern tractor.
John BAKER (not to be confused with the American artist John Leo Baker 1927-2005) was born in 1922. His description in David Buckman’s Dictionary of artists in Britain since 1945 :
Painter, draughtsman, illustrator, writer and lecturer, born in Birmingham, where he attended the School of Art, then Slade School of Fine Art. Worked under the guidance of the prolific newspaper draughtsman Hanslip Fletcher and freelanced for various publications, also lecturing on anatomy at Sir John Cass School. During the 1970s showed at RP, portraying civic dignitaries and show business personalities, then developed towards animal painting, involved in the early days of the Society of Equestrian Artists. Baker from 1966 wrote and illustrated a series of articles in the Surrey Advertiser called ‘The Seeing Eye’, and gained a local reputation as a controversial critic on architecture. He published A Picture of Surrey in 1980. Latterly lived near Salisbury, Wiltshire. Guildford Borough collection holds his works.
He also contributed at least 18 posters for a Macmillan’s children’s school set and A Picture of Hampshire, 1986. His carriage artwork for LNER is popular showing scenes of London landmarks too. I can’t find when he died – if he has!
Lastly I was amazed to discover a piece I’d not seen before by Raymond Sheppard, which I shared on my other blog.
NEXT: VOLUME SEVEN
Visual Rants 