Margaret Calkin James, was a calligrapher, graphic designer, textile printer, watercolour painter and printmaker, and is best known for her posters designed for the London Underground and London Transport between 1928 and 1935.
Background
She was born in Emmanuel, West Hampstead, the third of seven children of Harry Bernard Calkin (1861–1926), a senior underwriter at Lloyds and Margaret Agnes Palfrey (1870–1936), daughter of Penry Powell Palfrey (1830–1902), a well-known artist in stone and stained glass.
Education
She attended North London Collegiate School from 1909 to 1913.
Career
Untold numbers of commuters admired her Kenwood and Boxhill posters while oblivious of her identity. She was a student at the Central School of Arts and Crafts between 1913 and 1915, specialising in calligraphy and winning the Queen"s Scholarship in her final year. She then enrolled at the Westminster School of Artist
Her work was displayed at The Rainbow Workshops in Great Russell Street in Bloomsbury, which she opened in 1920 after World War I and was one of the first galleries started by a woman to promote art, craft and design.
She lived and worked at Lapstone Farm, in Chipping Campden during World World War World War II She designed posters for London Transport, book jackets for Jonathan Cape, pattern papers for Curwen Press, programmes and booklets for the British Broadcasting Corporation and a greetings telegram for the Government Printing Office. Some of her textiles were used at the new Norwich City Hall in 1938. In the late 1960s she suffered a stroke, paralysing her right side and depriving her of speech.
Undaunted, she started a series of wool embroidery designs using her left hand. Her daughter, Elizabeth Argent, lives at Alcester.