Block Prints and Beyond: Exploring the World of Jenny Stringer
Jenny Stringer is a prolific block printer whose work spans the last three decades. Feeling a little in awe of such dedication to her craft, and not entirely sure where to begin, we start with talking about thumb sucking. Like Jenny, as a child I was a prolific thumb sucker and I felt an immediate sense of kinship and ease from being around someone else who was equally bedazzled by their own thumb. I thought this could only be a good sign of things to come.
At the age of 80, Jenny is one of life’s enriching characters. She has a twinkle in her eye, a dry sense of humour and generosity in abundance, all of which are firmly underpinned by her following of the Quaker values of simplicity, integrity, community, stewardship and equality. It’s a jolly nice balance to be around and conversations with Jenny cascade from thumb sucking to William Morris to Ukraine, the alms houses in Cirencester, to pithy quotes, Spoonerisms and tales of Italy. No stone is left unturned and having coffee and breakfast with Jenny on a Saturday morning is a highlight in the week.
I begin asking Jenny about inspiration and how her work has changed over time, themes, and recurrences but soon realise that Jenny is of an independent mind and has of course created her own mold which don’t necessarily fit with current trends. Like many others, she started on the kitchen table, and was proud to be able to clear her stuff away for the next meal in seven minutes flat. Jenny now has a workroom-cum-sitting room, with a long padded print table in the bay window, and a side table for drawing and for cutting blocks, of either rubber or lino.
We talk about Picasso and all the different phases he went through and how he said; ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal’ and I realized that Jenny’s inspiration may not come from ‘sitting on the radiator’ as she rather humbly suggested with a shrug, but that it is in everything and is neither copied nor stolen but entirely her own.
We leaf through her book of samples and I drink up the sage greens, delicious reds and varied patterns while she explains there was an aunt who was an avid collector of fossils which inspired one pattern, a fir tree seeding and bursting into sunshine which inspired another, an emotional attachment to an army Khaki blanket, some Byzantine Bishops outfits she once liked which can be seen in another and a story about blue walls and purple carpets involving a friend of her mother’s who was a Montessori school teacher. Jenny’s work is like her conversation and approach to life; it’s rich, varied, and delightfully broad.
On looking at Jenny’s designs, these stories may initially form an ‘image’ but what then sits behind, within and all around this is a brilliant use of space – an allusion to the Japanese Ma concept – along with a kaleidoscopic effect of mixing triangles, circles, spirals and squares to create a feeling of height and depth. Careful consideration is also given to the repetition of the pattern and how this impacts the design. Her prints reveal a certain thing on one level, then another and so the spiral of revelation continues. Jenny dismisses it as being the ‘shabby chateau’ effect which she says is easy to create. I’m not so sure I agree there Jenny.
Jenny was trained as an Archaeological Illustrator who started life as a would-be-potter interested in delftware. On realising that throwing clay meant sharing kilns and studios and endless hand washing to meet anyone who stopped by, Jenny changed tack and started block printing. She has been doing this ever since and can regularly be found playing around with cut out shapes, or mixing colours, or in full production mode, with the material being printed across the long table, rolling from one broom handle to the other via a coat rack or a towel rail. Her colours, applied with a recycled washing-up sponge from a kitchen plate, are pulled along on a tea trolley as she goes. Each width is then ironed, once printed, to fix the dyestuff.
During her transition to block-printing, Jenny took a keen interest in the work of three ladies from Painswick, who, in the early - mid 20th Century, shaped the evolving textile world. Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher designed and produced printed fabrics on commission, for decorators and fashion designers. Enid Marx worked as an apprentice to Larcher and Barron, working in the garden, stirring the dye pots; she went on to become the brilliant modernist textile designer, painter, printmaker and illustrator who famously designed the woven ‘moquette’ seating for the London Underground.
Like so many artists and makers, selling is not Jenny’s forte. She can be heard saying to a husband looking for a wife’s birthday present ‘are you sure your wife will like it?’ (Being a maker of a natural skincare product myself, this is a sentiment I can very much relate to). Jenny swiftly follows up with a quote from William Morris that one should ‘Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.’ At this point, we both agree that the patronage system certainly brings benefits to the artist whose craft it may be to create, but not to sell.
Beside printing her own designs, Jenny runs classes for children and adults and finds it endlessly fascinating and hugely rewarding to see what they do and what they come up with; whether it’s aubergine leaves from the compost, red onion skins or apple twigs for natural dyes or new block cuts. One of her aims is to put an emphasis on things either being recycled or recyclable. Her classes are, in a sense, a way of preserving information which otherwise may be lost, as well as a way of lighting the flame of desire to create in the next generation.
If you haven’t yet visited Whittington Court in Gloucestershire, as Elizabeth I did on her way to Sudeley Castle, and also home to the world-renowned Nomad Letter Press, do look out for the open days this year. Not only is the house full of the most beautiful treasures but you might catch a glimpse of Jenny in her studio which seems always to be bathed in soft light, or the white rabbit who hops around in the garden.
Opening times for Whittington Court can be found here and the Nomad Letter Press also has an annual open day.
