Denby Trees
It would be hard to find design that screams 1970s than this bold and colourful design. It has influences of Pop-Art, Psychedelic Art and the bold and colourful Graphic Design of this era. The design consists of black silhouetted trees set against an op-art style dot pattern sky in white on purple with rolling hills in green, orange and ochres. These colours (and the style of graphic) defined the look of so much design in the 1970s.
Denby Trees 1970.
This article was originally published a few years ago, but the wordpress file was corrupted and it couldn’t be viewed, so here it is refreshed in all its wonderful colour, with some additional information.
It would be hard to find design that screams 1970s than this bold and colourful design. It has influences of Pop-Art, Psychedelic Art and the bold and colourful Graphic Design of this era. The design consists of black silhouetted trees set against an op-art style dot pattern sky in white on purple with rolling hills in green, orange and ochres. These colours (and the style of graphic) defined the look of so much design in the 1970s.
It was only in production for 1 year as far as I can make out, making it a very scarce design to find now.
The shapes the design is placed on you may recognise immediately as the forms Gill Pemberton designed for “Chevron” in the 1960s. The “Trees” design was placed on all of the forms of Chevron including the steel handled teapot, coffee pots, lidded forms, bowls, plates and dishes.
The design of Trees is by Diana Woodcock-Beckering who was trained at the Croydon College of Art and Design in 1962, which led to a Diploma at Loughborough College, before post graduate MA qualifications at the Royal College of Art, London starting in 1966.
Diana worked at Denby between 1969-1971, and after leaving Denby, Diana (now Diana Worthy) went on to set up Crich Pottery in Derbyshire in 1972 with her husband.
There is so much to Diana than her “Trees” design for Denby though.
I found a very thorough and well written 2001 article on the studio work of Diana HERE , which also has a good variety of images clearly showing the style Diana developed. Diana’s achievements during her study and post graduate study were quite stellar – from the article linked is this quote:
“Diana could usually be found in college (Royal College of Art) at all hours, seven days a week. There she met Hans Coper, David Queensberry and Eduardo Paulozzi. Diana won the RCA prize for drawing and also the Frank Denning Memorial Award to study designs in Scandinavia. Her final degree show M (Design) RCA resulted in offers of freelance pottery designing for Kilkenny Design workshops and for Denby Pottery in Derbyshire. She also took a full time lecturing post at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in the Faculty of three-dimensional design”
I found this charming piece from Crich Pottery by Diana, where the tree theme is used again on a handmade stoneware bottle form, to a different but equally resolved effect. You will find many more examples like this just by typing “Crich Pottery” into a search engine images.
Diana and her husband closed Crick Pottery in 2004 after 30 successful years there, and re-located to Spain where Diana now works with Textiles (information sourced from her website HERE) . Diana also has a Facebook page here
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