Olga Blandford Lewis, (1917-2002)

[Michael Rhodes]

Olga Blandford Lewis, who died 23 November, 2002, aged 85, was a
botanical artist noted for the precision and versatility of her work.

She was born Olga Agatha Polychroniadis at Romford, Essex, 4 June,
1917, the daughter of a naval architect who had left Athens to make a
career in England at the end of the 19th century. She was brought up
at Hornchurch, Essex, and educated at Romford Grammar School for
Girls.

Career: she became a Red Cross nurse at the Harold Wood Hospital,
Romford, & worked there throughout the Blitz [during this period she
was accorded the honour of carrying into the hospital the first
consignment of the new *wonder drug*, penicillin]; later a medical
artist, illustrating & recording injuries both before and after
surgery; employed by the pharmaceutical firm May & Baker;. she did not
take up botanical seriously until she was over 60. Much of her art has
been publihsed on greeting cards since; has exhibited at the Linnaean
Society, the International Flower Show at Hampton Court and the Royal
Institute of Painters in Watercolours.

There are examples of Blandford Lewis's work in the Natural History
Museum, and she was a founder member of the Society of Botanical
Artists, of which she was vice-president from 1987 to 1997.

Between 1979 and 2000 she was awarded nearly 20 medals at Royal
Horticultural Shows. The Lindley Library at the RHS has some 40 of her
paintings of Brassica, cacti, bulbs and corms; the museum at the Royal
Botanical Gardens at Kew has 20 paintings by her of edible fungi.

In 1951 she married Ronald Blandford Lewis, by whom she had three
sons. She was widowed in 1978.