B is for Bookplates - 2 - Great Aunt 'Nina'

Helena Invicta Hall, was always known as Great Aunt Nina, and I used to think she must have been Mum's Aunt, one of the siblings of my Grandfather? But in preparing this, from the ages of those involved, it's become obvious she must have been Grandad's Aunt, despite outliving him, so Mum's Great Aunt, and therefore My Great Aunt once-removed . . . I think!

 

She is best known publicly for her recent, posthumous memoirs; A Woman in the Shadow of the Second World War, which I have only recently discovered, which is sad, as my mother must have been the person who left the diary with the local record's office, as she handled Nina's estate as nominated executor, but I don't think she ever knew of the book's existence? It was Nina's money which bought us our Austin A35 van, with which Mum furnished the house.

 

She is better known to me, not as a diarist, but as one of the inter-war art mob, who were a mix of tail-end/surviving Arts & Crafts movement advocates, and full-on modernists (Gill Sans typeface) with a hint of Art Deco, which included Eric Gill (who we don't talk about any more, weird sinner), and his brother Gordon, the printer/publisher. Uncle 'Jock' (one of Grandad's brothers) was a keen amateur or naive artist in Suffolk around the same time.

 

I have a lot of her work which I will Blog one day; sketches, templates and proofs for Pub signs, Church and village fête posters & flyers, local authority announcements, shop-window things (opening times, open/closed signs, that kind of thing) she was a busy, jobbing commercial artist and signwriter.

In which skill, she designed two bookplates for herself, one earlier in life, and a later one, both of which we're looking at here. Above is what I believe is the first, printed by Gordon Gill's London works and dated 1900, she would have been about 27 then, but it may be a second printing of a student-days design? To the right is a roughly contemporary picture of her, I think it's dated '97 on the back, and that's the 18's for younger readers!

This, as far as I know was the one she was using up to her death in 1967, I was only three and barely remember the shenanigans of Mum whizzing back and forth to Sussex, but there are vague recollections.

 

A much more austere or simpler design, with nothing more than hand calligraphy, I actually found a box or two still in Mum's papers, but I don't know when it dates from! Reading Gill's history, you can see how Nina, too, was subscribing to the anti-technology/mass production of consumerism with this paired-down, minimalist style.