O View of a Little Gallery display showing Barron and Larcher hand-printed linens with a basket
Muriel Rose Archive © Crafts Study Centre (2006)
A Modern Crafts Legacy: Muriel Rose and the Crafts Study Centre Jean Vacher
When she died in 1986 Muriel Rose left a lasting mark on the history of the modern crafts movement. Her long association with the Crafts Study Centre began in 1967 and forms a strong part of this narrative. The exhibition, Muriel Rose explores these interconnections and the legacy that she left for the Centre. What was the nature of this legacy? In a letter to her in 1976, the highly celebrated potter Bernard Leach, and lifelong friend of ‘Rose’, as she was affectionately known to those close to her, wrote: ‘You’ve no competitor, either re your little shop or into your insight re English Crafts and Craftsmen’.1 When the Crafts Study Centre was founded in 1970, Rose (1897-1986) was by this time in her early 70s and as a founding Trustee, brought to the role a formidable background in the crafts. Between 1928 and 1939 Rose co-owned and managed with Margaret Turnbull, the Little Gallery in Ellis Street, off Sloane Street in London which exhibited and sold the work of the leading artist-craftsmen and women of the day. As Kate Woodhead’s foreword to this publication shows, Rose played a major role in building the reputation of these practitioners by giving them a platform in the form of a London showroom at a time when most, if not all, were in an economically vulnerable position.
MURIEL ROSE: A MODERN CRAFTS LEGACY
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