Gordon House; artist-designer
Hyfler/Rosner
Gordon House
Creative and driven artist-designer
05 April 2004
Charles Gordon House, artist and designer: born
Pontardawe, Glamorgan 22 June 1932; married 1955 Jo Hull
(two sons, one daughter, and one son deceased); died London
20 March 2004.
Gordon House was an artist-designer of great creativity. His
myriad images were sought after by leading galleries,
artists and musicians for well over 40 years.
House ranks with notable artist-designers, such as E.
McKnight Kauffer, Misha Black, Abram Games, Ashley Havinden,
F.H.K Henrion and Tom Eckersley, who defined how we saw
things in Britain in the 20th century. He was both admired
and liked by his peers, an innate modesty preventing his
name being widely known outside his chosen field.
Gordon House was born in Pontardarwe, south Wales, in 1932,
the older of two sons of a painter and decorator, Stanley
House, and his wife Katie. Modern art seen on a visit to the
Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea with his grandmother
steered the young Gordon towards his career. His family was
encouraging when he earned a place at Luton and St Albans
Schools of Art in 1947.
House had then to earn a living, lacking the means to paint
and show at whim. His development over the next decade was a
tribute to his single-mindedness. From 1950 until 1952,
House worked in an advertising agency and as assistant to
the Austrian artist Theador Kern, during the 1950s
commissioned by the monks of Buckfast Abbey and others to
create ecclesiastical sculpture. House liked all such
techniques. The sculptor's way with materials was
squirrelled away, to be drawn on again when in 1995 House
returned to sculpture, producing Objects, a singular series
of bronzes.
Employment as a designer for the plastics division of
Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) from 1952 until 1959
extended House's knowledge. He collaborated with writers
working on a vast range of technical journals and became
familiar with industrial moulding techniques and
fabrication. House was eventually transferred to work at
ICI's head office as a graphic designer to Kynock Press,
engaged on pre-press work. He became widely knowledgeable
about all aspects of type and printing, and was aware of the
changes that were about to revolutionise the industry.
House remained fascinated by the potential of the new
technologies. Not long before he died he wrote that "we
stand on the threshold of endless technical possibilities
extending the whole field of image presentation. It is
inevitable that new directions will be sought."
Alongside his day job, House produced his own work, showing
with the London Group in 1957. The 1960s witnessed his
increasing involvement with the vibrant new British art
scene; he took part in the key Situation exhibition at the
RBA Galleries and designed its eye-opening catalogue.
In 1955 he married Jo Hull, who would act as his secretary
as well as bringing up the family. From 1961, he went
freelance, and so remained. At first, times were lean.
Living in north London, House would walk to the West End to
meet potential clients to save the fare.
In 1961-64, he taught part-time at the Central, Hornsey and
several out-of-London art schools. Back from the classroom,
he would roll up the carpet in the bedsitter where he and Jo
lived and paint until he dropped.
Over the years, House was involved in a string of important
exhibitions, from New Painting in England, at Leverkusen
Museum, West Germany, in 1961, to The Sixties Art Scene in
London, at the Barbican Centre, 1993, and was a regular
exhibitor at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, designing
its catalogues. His numerous design clients ranged from top
London dealers such as Eskenazi, Richard Green, Marlborough
Fine Art and Waddington, through the Beatles and the Rolling
Stones, to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. His strength was
that while he would farm out parts of a job, clients knew
that House would personally draw the whole package together.
Gordon House was a driven man, a workaholic who produced
unique and unmistakable images, apparently abstract, but
leaning heavily on visual sources. His work is held by key
public and corporate collections in Britain and abroad. Good
examples were seen in his 1961-68 print retrospective at the
Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, and Brooklyn Museum, New
York; in his Ashmolean solo exhibition in 1993-94; and in
his subsequent privately produced Catalogue of Editions
1982-1996.
House's "stumbling, endless task of self-analysis" continued
to the end. He insisted that a colleague come in to complete
a final, untitled edition of prints which employed new
signwriting techniques.
David Buckman
Gordon House had just completed his book Tin Pan Valley, a
memoir of his life, when he was taken ill towards the end of
last year, writes Sir Peter Blake. Sadly he didn't live to
see its publication, but it has now been published by
Archive Press and we are able to read this beautiful, spare
account of his life and work.
Gordon and I were born just three days apart, in June 1932 -
he was the older by those three days. We were friends for
more than 50 years. I was introduced to Gordon by Richard
Smith, a fellow student at the Royal College of Art. Dick
and Gordon had been students together at St Albans School of
Art.
We probably met first at the Institute of Contemporary Arts,
where our generation exhibited and socialised. Both of us
had exhibitions there and at the New Vision Centre, which
was at the cutting edge of painting for the young artists of
our generation. We later would both show at the Robert
Fraser Gallery and Waddington Galleries.
There are very few artists who are equally comfortable and
talented at being both a painter and a graphic designer, and
Gordon House was one such. We often worked together as
designers, notably when I did the front cover of the LP by
the Beatles Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Gordon
was responsible for the typography on the back of the
record. He went on to work on the White Album for the
Beatles with Richard Hamilton, then on further Beatles
recordings and, later, most of Paul McCartney's records. We
were also working together until very recently on the
catalogues for a series of exhibitions I have curated.
Gordon was a great collector, and would travel the shops and
markets of Islington where he lived. Sometimes he would find
things which he thought I would like, most recently
photographs of and the medals won by a lion-tamer. He
collected all sorts of things, but I think the most
important was the group of paintings by the artists of his
own generation, most of whom were his friends.
In the early 1960s, the ICA decided to produce a portfolio
of prints by 20 artists. It was Gordon who asked Chris
Prater, a commercial silk-screen printer working in a tiny
dark basement in Islington, printing mainly soap-powder
boxes, if he would print the portfolio. Of course, Chris,
with Rose Prater, went on, at Kelpra Press, to become an
extraordinary master silk-screen printer.
Gordon also set up White Ink studio with Cliff White, where
Cliff printed both etchings and wonderfully delicate wood
engravings, surrounded by a museum-quality collection of
antique printing presses put together by Gordon.
I loved outings with Gordon. He would collect me in his
always shiny Volvo, to take me to a printer or perhaps a
bronze foundry, to discuss a project. These outings always
included a meal, sometimes lunch, and occasionally breakfast
at a roadside café, where we would both have a full English
fried breakfast. Gordon was always very generous to his
friends, and these meals usually ended up with us arguing
for the right to pay the bill. Gordon usually won.
Gordon House painted consistently since the early 1950s,
rather quietly and modestly in his various studios, and has
left behind a large group of beautiful, delicate paintings.
I hope that someone will organise a retrospective exhibition
of his work. It would now of course by a memorial
exhibition, but the work should be seen.