User:ShebaFra21/John Tandy

JOHN TANDY (1905-1982) was a British artist and designer best known as a wood engraver and a painter. Named John Moncrief Tandy, he was the son of Brig.-Gen E. Napper Tandy D.S.O., O.B.E. He served as a governor at St Martin's School of Art and a treasurer of both the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the DIA.

Career
He started his career by studying architecture at the Architectural Association in London, and then attended Leon Underwood School of Painting from 1923-4. He had his first solo show at Cottars Studio Gallery in 1928, where he exhibited a series of wood engravings called "Abstract Designs", clear, bold black-and-white abstracts, combining geometric and organic shapes.

From 1927-36 he lived in Paris and Provence, returning to London in 1936, where he held a successful exhibition of engravings at the Wertheim Gallery. Later that year he joined the interior decorating company Hartigans of Knightsbridge, where he developed his style of work, designing textiles for modern interiors using his knowledge of the technique of wood-engraving to produce designs of "a rare delicacy and precision". His textile and rug designs are notable for their simplicity of line.

In 1937 received commission from Alastair Morton (1910-1963) to design, as part of Morton's Edinburgh Weavers venture. Morton commissioned leading contemporary artists of the day to produce designs for woven, printed furnishing fabrics, he sought out artists who both had previous connections with designing textiles and other "pure artists" who had had little or no contact with applied art, including Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Elizabeth Frink, Marino Marini and Victor Vasarely. Morton sought out bothTandy produced four designs: Tanly, Distra, Winander and Shiraz. His rug designs were also produced by Wilton Royal Carpet Factory, and he designed textiles. Both his rugs and textiles sold through Duncan Miller.

He served as a director of Consultants Ltd from 1939, a multidisciplinary graphics, products and exhibition design company.

It is from these compositions that rugs were often woven, sometimes at a later date.

Signed his work J.T. or TANDY

Examples of his rugs were illustrated in the design journals of the day, for example "Decoration" (1937) Feb: 25-6

address Hayes Marshall 7 Carlyle House, Old Church Street, Chelsea SW3

Works in Public Collections

 * Abstract Composition Wood engraving c1930 Cleveland Museum of Art (Accession Number: 1988.45)
 * Abstract Design Wood engraving on paper c1930 Portland Art Museum (Accession Number 2005.86)
 * Shiraz and Winander Furnishing Fabrics for Edinburgh Weavers (manufacturers) Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Museum number: T.210:1 to 3-2009 and T.295-2009)

Exhibitions

 * Osborne Samuel Ltd, London (2016) A Radical View: Avant-Garde British Printmaking 1914-1964.
 * Ryan Gallery, NYC (1985) Lill Tschudi and John Tandy.
 * Brighton: Royal Pavillion. Exhibition (1975)British Carpets and Designs: The Modernist Rug 1928-1938.