Curwen Press

[6] Decoration was largely in the hands of Harold Curwen who encouraged artists such as Claud Lovat Fraser, Paul Nash, and latterly Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Barnett Freedman and Enid Marx, from the same year of the Royal College of Art, to undertake work for the Press.

This included printing advertising posters for London Transport, produced lithographically by the craftsmen of the Press from original art work.

Printed by the Press, Signature featured original and formative graphic work and writings by relatively new artists such as Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Eric Ravilious.

it has been said that 'no journal can make a greater claim to have stimulated the taste that became Neo-Romanticism,'[11] a term applied to the imaginative and often quite abstract landscape- based painting of Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland, John Piper and others in the late 1930s and 1940s.

The creation of 'clip art' - premade images used for illustration - and the experimentation with inks that had an almost fluorescent intensity helped to define the house style of the Press.

Harold Curwen sought to instill pride and a sense of ownership in his employees and customers through the promotion of excellence in mechanical printing.

Many more British works were added to the catalogue by Granville Bantock, Rutland Boughton, Walford Davies, Charles Villiers Stanford and Vaughan Williams, among others.

Mental health difficulties led to his early retirement, although he remained in contact with the Press as shareholder and Board member until his death in 1949.

It supported an era of British avant-garde printmaking that lasted decades, and further cemented the Curwen name as synonymous with fine art and printing.

Due to Simon's encouragement and commissioning of a broad range of artists to produce lithographs, the Studio maintained the hand-drawn creativity which the Curwen Press had displayed between the wars.

Artists included sculptors such as Elizabeth Frink, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, alongside a new younger generation of who wanted to explore the medium which Harold Curwen had championed decades earlier.