A page from Marx's notebook (Photo: Compton Verney Museum)[Missing Credit]
But that failure never held her back, as she established her own studio in the 1920s. In the 1930s she was commissioned by London Underground to create designs to upholster Tube train seats, then universally grey and brown. She made the hard-wearing moquette glow like velvet in an iconic red, green and blue shield design for the Bakerloo and Northern lines which bore out her belief that “the best method of ensuring the seats would look clean after a period of use was to use strongly contrasting tones and rather brilliant colour.”
Enid Marx moquette for London Underground[Missing Credit]
She also created an elegantly subdued taupe and violet “Belsize” geometric design which decorated seats on the Metropolitan and District lines for years.
She created posters for London Underground, taking Noah’s Ark as her inspiration for drawings promoting London Zoo. During the Second World War, an urgent need arose for utility furnishing fabric to curtain and reupholster the homes of bombed-out Brits. Colourful and attractive patterns did not take priority for this emergency production until Marx took over the design of rationed fabrics. “She asked people what they wanted starting with her char-lady, for whom she created a floral print,” says Crawford. Marx believed aesthetics could improve even the poorest materials.
Noahs Ark poster design by Enid Marx[Missing Credit]
In 1944 she became the first woman engraver to be appointed a Royal Designer for Industry. She designed the floral ring that surrounded Elizabeth II’s portrait in the first round of stamps bearing the image of the new Queen, who was an early client of Marx’s Little Gallery. Marx went on to head the Dress, Textiles and Ceramics department at Croydon College of Art as well as teaching Peter Blake and his Pop Art-promoting cohort at the RCA. She continued to work well into her 90s.
Floral ring for 1950s stamp portraits of Elizabeth II by Enid Marx[Missing Credit]
The new exhibition is at Compton Verney, the Midlands museum that Marx fell in love with during its development, and where she bequeathed the many furnishings and popular art objects she collected with her life partner of nearly 70 years, the historian Margaret Lambert.
Enid Marx[Missing Credit]
It addresses her friendship with another Jewish artist, Barnett Freedman. His lithograph Charade illustrates the kind of close social life enjoyed by the RCA class of 1925 which threw the two together despite their very different backgrounds.
“Marx was born into a very wealthy Jewish family in north London and Freedman into a very poor one in the East End, but despite that she became close to his family and spent a lot of time with them,” says Crawford. She thinks they both felt like outsiders
at the RCA, not a new feeling for Marx: “She seems to have felt it also in boarding school at Roedean, as a first-generation Brit.”
Designs by Marx (photo: Compton Verney Museum)[Missing Credit]
Through Lambert, whose father was a friend of Winston Churchill, Marx became acutely aware of the fate of other German Jews under Nazi rule. They pushed the British government to intervene as they learnt of the worsening conditions for Jews in all areas under German control – and acted themselves although the details are hazy. “We know they were involved in the Kindertransport and possibly with MI5, but many details remain unknown” says Crawford, as is, she says, the rumour that Enid was a distant cousin of that social justice warrior who preceded her, Karl Marx.
The Pattern of Life: Enid Marx and Modern British Design is at Compton Verney Museum until January 3, 2027
A book by Marx, part of the new exhibition (Photo: Compton Verney Museum)[Missing Credit]