Education
After leaving school she studied art at Street John"s Wood School of Art, Royal Academy Schools, and Bram Shaw School of Drawing and Painting.
After leaving school she studied art at Street John"s Wood School of Art, Royal Academy Schools, and Bram Shaw School of Drawing and Painting.
During the Second World War, she worked as a "Land Girl" in the Women"s Land Army. At the end of the conflict she began to design costumes for the theatre and was quickly talent spotted by the dancer and actor Sir Robert Helpmann. Cruddas soon became one of the leading modern theatre designers of the post war period.
Cruddas" first commission was designing costumes for The White Devil at the Duchess Theatre, London (1947).
Other early career highlights were for John Burrell’s 1947 Old Vic production of Taming of the Shrew and Verdi’s, Aida at Convent Garden (1948). Notable later productions include Michael Benthall’s Old Vic productions of Julius Caesar (1955), Cymbeline (1957), and Hamlet (1958), and Peter Potter’s Edinburgh Festival production of ‘The Wallace’ (1960).
In the early 1950s, Cruddas moved to the Essex village of Great Bardfield. At Bardfield she became involved with the dynamic art community which included: John Aldridge, Edward Bawden, George Chapman, Stanley Clifford-Smith, Joan Glass, Walter Hoyle, Sheila Robinson, Michael Rothenstein, Marianne Straub, among others
In the 1960s, she moved to Bank House, Botesdale, Suffolk.
Cruddas" work is in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London) and the Fry Art Gallery (Saffron Walden).
Cruddas lived in Walton House, Great Bardfield (next door to Edward Bawden’s Brick House) during most of the 1950s and she was an important member of the art community that lived in the Essex village.