Disruption, Devotion + Distributism – The politics and philosophy behind the art and craft of Ditchling

Sat 19 October 2019 – Sun 19 April 2020

Unseen objects from Hilary Pepler’s St Dominic’s Press to go on display at Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft

This Winter, Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft will present a major exhibition exploring the ideas and beliefs of The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic. The exhibition will feature over 100 objects, including never-before-seen posters and pamphlets printed by St Dominic’s Press alongside works from the museum’s permanent collection by artists including Eric Gill, David Jones, Ethel Mairet and Valentine KilBride. Many of the featured objects will come from a recent major acquisition of St Dominic’s Press materials, acquired through the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2017.

The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic was a Roman Catholic community of artists and craftspeople founded in 1920 in Ditchling, the legacy of which sits at the heart of Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft’s collections. The St Dominic’s Press was a private press, set up by popular printer Hilary Pepler, that published a wide range of material including books and pamphlets for The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic and other artists and thinkers sharing their philosophy around craftsmanship and life.

The exhibition will be organised around the Guild’s core principles – a resistance to industrialisation and city-living, their devout Catholicism and a commitment to Distributism, a movement that championed individual land ownership in rural communities. The exhibition will examine the, at times, controversial ideas and beliefs held by founding Guild members including Edward Johnston, Hilary Pepler and Desmond Chute, and their engagement with wider debates taking place nationally and internationally in the early 20th century. The exhibition will examine the work of Guild members alongside other artists working in Ditchling at the time.

Pepler set up the St Dominic’s Press in 1915, five years prior to the Guild’s formation. The press produced an abundance of printed matter, from Christmas cards, missals and song sheets, to handsome volumes of verse and theology. Among the first books printed in Ditchling was Ethel Mairet’s Vegetable Dyes, one of the most influential texts of the handicraft’s revival. Used to produce anything from tiny beer labels for the local pub to huge posters, the press allowed the Guild to circulate their values and ideas to a wider audience which they hoped would precipitate wider social change.

The desire to make a living using traditional tools and techniques was one of the reasons for the likes of Hilary Pepler, Eric Gill, Joseph Cribb and Desmond Chute’s move to Ditchling. These artists and craftspeople strove to work and live in the natural, simpler environment of the countryside, closer to God and away from the unemotive, industry-ridden capital. The Guild later owned their own land and tools, and rejected the fast-moving world taking shape at the time.

This philosophy of independent self-sufficiency had its roots in Distributism, a political movement that largely responded to the rise of capitalism and resisted socialism. The Guild’s political beliefs were depicted by social campaigner and wood engraver Philip Hagreen. His woodblock designs satirised life in the early 20th century and lightened serious subject matter with his sharp wit and humour. Hagreen’s work still holds significant impact when viewed through a contemporary lens, and these satirical works would not seem out of place in today’s newspapers.

The Guild’s devotion to Roman Catholic faith fundamentally intertwined with their work. Exhibition highlights include a safe door that was painted by David Jones, which guarded the Guild’s chalices. The exhibition will also include objects such as exquisite rosaries by Dunstan Pruden, candlesticks by carpenter George Maxwell and a rug for the Guild’s chapel, dyed and woven by Ethel Mairet, gifted as a reciprocal gesture for a stone garden roller and oak workshop sign that Gill made for her.

Other highlights will include a never-before-seen plan of the arm of the Spoil Bank Crucifix, which was carved by Eric Gill after a funding appeal in 1919. The wooden crucifix (described by his biographer Fiona MacCarthy as ‘crudely dramatic’) was 26ft tall and originally stood overlooking the railway line on the Ditchling Common. Its elevated position announced the presence of the Guild to the world and served as an ominous warning to the godless traveller headed from the metropolis of London.

Presented alongside the exhibition will be a screening of unseen archive footage courtesy of the Pepler family. Filmed by Hilary Pepler’s visiting American friends, the film will show the now demolished Guild workshop on Ditchling Common and members of the Guild including Joseph Cribb, Valentine Kilbride, Eric Gill and Dunstan Pruden, alongside other local artists and writers including Frank Brangwyn. The never-before-seen footage has been expertly restored by the Screen Archive South East, University of Brighton.

The exhibition will also feature a display by contemporary typographers Alan Kitching and Kelvyn Smith titled ‘Kitching in Ditchling: The London Series’. Kitching and Smith run The New Typography Workshop, a hands-on school of design & typography with traditional letterpress methods at its core. The craftsmen value the slow articulation of letterpress much as Pepler and Gill did, rejecting the speed and dispensability of modern technology and revelling in the simple joys of making.

Alan Kitching has spent most of his professional life in London, exploring and enjoying its iconic landmarks as well as its lesser-known charms. Kitching will present his ‘A to Z of London’, a series of 26 prints created in collaboration with Karoline Newman which captures Kitching’s favourite haunts in the capital, marrying the individual letters of the alphabet with significant buildings, monuments, sports grounds and retailers.

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