Marthe Armitage

Armitage studied painting at the Chelsea School of Art. She looks to nature for themes, taking her first design “Angelica” from plants that grew along a riverbank in Chiswick as inspiration. Armitage grew up in Kew and loved to go to the Royal Botanic Gardens which she liked to recreate in her elegant wallpapers. She was a Master of the Art Workers’ Guild member. In the 1950s and 60s, when amorphic and abstract designs were popular, Armitage focused on an architectural and bold graphic style. After a two-year stay in India, she began linocut printing, producing papers by hand; but soon after, she resigned herself to purchasing a manual offset lithographic printing press. This allowed Armitage to do... more.