Potter's bow

Frederick (commonly F.L.) Griggs (1876-1938), was a distinguished English etcher, architectural draughtsman, illustrator and early conservationist, associated with the late flowering of the Arts and Crafts movement in the Cotswolds. He was one of the first etchers to be elected to full membership of the Royal Academy.

Born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, he worked as an illustrator for the Highways and Byways series of regional guides for the publishers, Macmillans. In 1903 he settled at Dover's House, in the market town of Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds, and went on to create one of the last significant Arts and Crafts houses at 'New Dover's House'. There he set up the Dover's House Press, where he printed late proofs of the etchings of Samuel Palmer, amongst others. He collaborated with Ernest Gimson and the Sapperton group of craftsmen in architectural and design work in the area.

'Fred' Griggs converted to Catholicism in 1912, and set about producing an incomparable body of etchings, 57 meticulous plates in a Romantic tradition, evoking an idealised medieval England of pastoral landscapes and architectural fantasies of ruined abbeys and buildings. His best known etchings include Owlpen Manor dedicated to his friend and near neighbour, the architect-craftsman Norman Jewson, Anglia Perdita, Maur's Farm, St Botolph's, Boston and The Almonry (the last two are in Te Papa's collection). Collections of his etched work are held in major public collections worldwide.

Griggs was one of the finest and most respected etchers of his time. He was an influential leader of the British etching revival in the 1920s and 1930s, and "the most important etcher who followed in the Samuel Palmer tradition" (K.M. Guichard, British Etchers, 1977). He occupies a pole position in the Romantic tradition of British art: he links the world of Blake, Turner and Samuel Palmer to a younger generation of neo-Romantic artists, including Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Robin Tanner.

Potter's Bow is one of Griggs's architectural fantasies of a magnificent, semi-ruined abbey (or small cathedral) and its approaches, the main building with period features such as a Romanesque south transept and a Perpendicular Gothic nave. The complicated viewpoint, approach with steps and medieval figures descending them is surely a portent of M.C. Escher, working a generation later. Both image and paper reflect Griggs's perfectionism and antiquarian bent. He told his friend Reginald Hine, "The paper Potter's Bow is printed on is some I bought (enough for a whole edition) at Avignon. It is a fine French paper of 1740 and wonderfully preserved. No other paper would please the plate -- in fact it was downright petulant about it."

See Wikipedia, 'F.L. Griggs', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._L._Griggs

Dr Mark Stocker    Curator, Historical International Art    April 2018