Sitting in her sunny kitchen overlooking the Thames-side garden she came to know in the 1930s, Marthe Armitage concedes that it’s not an easy house to leave. ‘I was nine years old when my parents moved to a house a few doors along, and we came to know the Armitage family who lived here at the time.’
The father, Joseph Armitage, was a successful architectural carver; among his clientele were eminent architects of the day, such as Edwin Lutyens. The National Trust’s oak leaf emblem is one of his best-known designs – the result of winning a competition in 1936.
After Marthe left school, she went to Chelsea School of Art (now part of University of the Arts London), where she learnt to draw and decided to be a painter. In 1951, aged 21, she married Edward Armitage, her neighbours’ son. After their marriage, the couple set off for India where Edward, an architect, was in charge of building a hospital. It was while she was strolling through a bazaar that she began to appreciate the appeal of block printing. ‘The printers worked on trestle tables, lengths of silk and cotton stretched from one end to the other. As I watched the blocks being applied, inked in different colours, I realised that slight variations of the hand-printed technique didn’t affect the designs in a negative way at all. Quite the opposite, in fact.’
Back in London, and now with two children, Marthe remembers struggling to paint. ‘I tried to paint inside the playpen, where the boys couldn’t get hold of me. It didn’t work; babies and painting are an impossible combination,’ she says. ‘Once the children were in school, I had a little more time to paint. It was decorating our home that prompted me to make a lino block, based on the angelica plants that grew along the towpath outside the house. That was my first repeat design – the first of over 40 that I’ve made. I’d done a bit of printing with lino blocks at school, so thought perhaps I could make some wallpaper. Friends liked it, and I had a few commissions. Eventually I bought an offset press; this meant I could print in two colours which, when combined, made a third. It changed everything.’
In the 1970s, the Armitage family moved into the Georgian house where Edward’s parents had lived for the previous 40 years. A lot of remedial work was required, after which money for decoration was tight, but with Marthe’s creative talent, little was needed. The house became a showcase for her creativity, with many prints based on plants in her garden, as well as those in nearby Kew Gardens, which she frequently visited as a child. Inspiration for her designs came from diverse sources: Willow is a variation on classic willow pattern china; Island drew on medieval terra incognita maps, and features ocean-going galleons and mythical sea creatures; Jugs was a result of a visit with the Art Workers’ Guild to Copenhagen’s Design Museum.
Marthe prefers a palette of less strident tones for her papers. ‘I’ve always felt that wallpaper should be the backdrop, rather than the main feature,’ she says. Having said that, it’s hard to imagine the many guests that she and her husband entertained weren’t left open-mouthed walking into the inky blue dining room, where the walls are lined in Willow.
of the bed is Old Man’s Beard, and the curtains are Chestnut, from the Designer range. - Andreas von Einsiedel -
Daughter Jo Broadhurst now heads up the company that bears the Marthe Armitage name. ‘As my children grew older I started helping Mum with the printing, and my involvement grew from there,’ says Jo.
