Denis MITCHELL (1912-1993) Two Fish on a Plate (Porthia Prin...

Hammer

£380

Denis MITCHELL (1912-1993) Two Fish on a Plate (Porthia Prints, 1955) Screenprint on fabric, signed within the print, 34 x 46cm, 43 x 53cm framed. This print was made in St Ives in the studio of Denis Mitchell, who worked with Terry Frost as an assistant to Barbara Hepworth. Frost also contributed a silkscreen design to the set of six table-mats produced by Porthia Prints in 1955. which Mitchell organised with Stanley Dorfman. The other artists involved were Peter Lanyon, Robert Adams, Barbara Hepworth, Roger Hilton and Mitchell himself, and their payment simply amounted to two dozen mats each (five of the mats and designs for all six were shown in the Redfern Gallery's 'Design' exhibition in 1986, nos 97a-110). The mats were available either as sets or individually, as Dorfman reported to Heal's (see correspondence dated 1 February 1955, in Heal's archives) that some customers bought only one or two, perhaps regarding them more as 'objets d'art' than as regular table linen. The novelty of using screenprinting for a form of applied design which could be treated as a work of art in its own right, had already been tried in the late forties by Zika and Lida Ascher, Czech textile designers working in Britain. - British Museum.