The book explores Marthe’s practice as a pattern maker and artist/producer of hand-printed wallpaper. Commissioned in 2018, Alison Harley captures her story through a series of essays and images. Both literally and metaphorically, this book is a quiet, beautiful, and telling object. Not only does it capture the story of artist-designer Marthe Armitage, who was born in 1930 of Dutch parentage and trained at Chelsea College of Art in London from 1947 until 1951, but in doing so it demonstrates a sensitivity to material and design very much of the same period. The result is a book that is as much a work of art as a document of an artist’s life and work. Her wallpapers, prints, diary entries, sketches, and photograph albums are represented on paper of such high quality that one has a sense of a private viewing of the real things to be found in the studio she has occupied in London for so many years.

marthearmitage.co.uk

alisonharley.co.uk

graphicalhouse.com

Images courtesy of Graphical House