I first encountered Tony Meeuwissen and his work a little under forty years ago. I had recently met, and fallen in love with, Tony’s fellow Folio artist, Don Cordery, and one of the first times we sallied out together was north-westwards, in Don’s pale green Citroen Dyane, to a party at Tony’s home in Stroud.
Tony lived at that time in a small flat in The Castle, an imposing three-storey Georgian house set down in a hollow at the end of one of Stroud’s vertiginous and unreasonably narrow streets. The vestibule and stairs held the half-expected aroma of warm toast and patchouli, commingled with coffee and, perhaps, tobacco. Winding upwards, dark and labyrinthine, the stairs finally led us to Tony's door. Inside, I felt rather shy and somewhat overwhelmed. But, gazing around, I was utterly transfixed by what I saw! This was a cave of delights, an overflowing cornucopia, a conjuror’s box of tricks!
Every wall was tightly hung with Tony's jewel-like paintings of beasts and birds ...
... and with myriad books tightly shelved. Everywhere, objets d'art, ephemera, pen & ink drawings, simulacra ...
... watercolour & gouache roughs, designs for book jackets and album covers, for matchboxes, ink bottles, children’s books …
Close to one of the sash windows a glossy black cat lay sleeping under a black & white wall rug. The weave showed a midnight tapir reflected in moonlit water and was fashioned by Tony’s lovely half-French girlfriend Marie. The design was, I learned later, based on the logo Tony had produced for his agency, Folio (see here). The device was later used as a design in The Key of the Kingdom ‘Transformation Card’ pack produced for the Victoria & Albert Museum.
But to Tony himself! There he was, a small dark-curled man with quizzical eyes and a voice redolent of a rather hesitant ‘speaking’ bird … as distinct as a parakeet, zany perhaps like a mynah but then as soft and as mesmerising as a lyrebird. Hospitable and vague, he seemed ill at ease and yet totally at home in himself. He had something of the air of a young Lionel Blair crossed with an early-twentieth century Western rascal guru, weaving Sufi riddles and puzzles into the rarefied and scented atmosphere.
Tony's work surely demonstrated that same spirit! Familiar objects shown to be doing unfamiliar things! Nothing was as it appeared! How, I wondered, did he ‘become’ the man and the artist he now was?
Tony was born in Croydon in 1938, the year before the outbreak of World War II. His surname (pronounced May-vissen) originates from the family of his Dutch grandfather.
He was awarded a place at the grammar school in Egham at the age of twelve, leaving again at sixteen having found drawing and painting to be his real and only passion.
His artistic influences throughout that time were, among others (l-r) Gerard Hoffnung, Maurits Escher, Paul Klee, Rene Magritte, Mervyn Peake and Marc Chagall.
And not to be omitted is Edward Julius Detmold (1883-1957), the prolific and enchanting watercolourist, printmaker and illustrator.
After six years' apprenticeship in both the art and layout departments of a North London studio named Theatre Publicity (later taken over by Rank Screen Services), he worked for the next few years as an art director in London advertising agencies. He found himself, in 1965, at Gerald Green Associates. Here he met Al Vandenberg, creative director and reportage photographer. Tony has said since that he regards Vandenberg as his only teacher.
Vandenberg subsequently introduced Tony to Michael Cooper, who had photographed the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and had, in fact, been influential in the cover’s overall concept. In 1967 Cooper commissioned him to create a border for The Rolling Stones’ album Their Satanic Majesties Request. Tony produced a landscape embracing the four elements of earth, water, air and fire and, although he was not altogether happy with it, the painting appeared on the back cover of the album.
In the years that followed Tony made contact with the art directors of The Sunday Times colour supplement, Penguin Books and Radio Times, becoming a regular contributor to all three.
Thus began a freelance career that continues today. Mike Dempsey, in an article in Eye Magazine, said,
"By 1972 he was in great demand. He had thirteen pieces of work in the D&AD Annual that year and was working for Island Records, Penguin Books, Lloyds Bank, Transatlantic Records, Music Sales, BBC Publications and Kinney Records, for which he won his first D&AD Gold Award."
This record label for Transatlantic Records won Tony a D&AD silver award in 1972. D&AD (Designers and Art Directors Association) is an education charity that promotes and enables excellence in design and advertising
Represented by Folio Illustration & Animation Agency (folioart.co.uk) from about 1976, he has received more honours since then for his work.
1983 saw Tony’s design for the Christmas stamps issued by The Royal Mail.
One of these stamps, depicting a dove and a blackbird and which represented peace, won the Italian Francobollo d’Oro Award in 1984 for the world’s most beautiful stamp.
His second set of stamps was issued in 1991, the designs being based around the concept of ‘good luck'.
A third set was issued in 2001 and was based upon a 'weather' theme. These were voted the most popular British stamps of that year by readers of the Royal Mail's monthly British Philatelic Bulletin.
Tony's 'The Key of the Kingdom', a magnificent 'Transformation' deck, was published by Pavilion Books in 1992.
Let Folio describe and explain how this project came about:
"In the late 1980s, a collector and occasional commissioner of curious and historic card decks, based at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, gave Tony an intriguing assignment: to design a set of court cards for a new deck to be based on traditional nursery rhymes. From this developed the irresistible challenge of designing a full set of transformation playing cards.
“First appearing in the early 1800s, transformation playing cards incorporate the suit ‘pips’ into an intriguing illustrated scene. Because the form enjoyed a relatively brief heyday, they are now highly sought after by collectors.
“Each of Tony’s original artworks was created in gouache, watercolour and pastel at postcard size, requiring incredible attention to detail – not to mention pin-sharp eyesight and a steady hand.
“The companion volume exhibits each card along with the verses and riddles that inspired them, featuring passages from Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, Ogden Nash and Lewis Carroll.”
Tony has been quoted as saying that 'The Key of the Kingdom' was his favourite project. And for this, in 1993, he was awarded both the Gold D&AD (Design and Development) Golden Pencil and the V&A Illustration Award.
Tony became a Royal Designer for Industry in 2013. The title ‘Royal Designer for Industry’ (RDI) is awarded annually by the RSA (Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) to designers of all disciplines who have achieved ‘sustained design excellence, work of aesthetic value and significant benefit to society’. The RSA said:
“….Following the tradition of the finest British graphic artists, he has taken the medium to a new dimension through an extraordinary level of ingenuity, wit, and craft.”
It is impossible for me to list or describe the full range of work that has led to such acknowledgement. But here are a few more pieces (in no particular chronological order), some more than others reflecting Tony's eclectic and esoteric bent. These have especially interested me, particularly having learned that he encountered and sought to embrace the teachings of George Gurdjieff, the Armenian mystic, early on in his life. This work is playful, joyful, and purely beautiful.
Fontana published Silent Music: The Science of Meditation, by William Johnston, in 1976, with the cover illustration by Tony.
Penguin Books published 'The Way of the Sufi' by
Idries Shah in 1977. This is Tony's cover illustration.
In a series of book covers for C S Lewis’s theological works published by Fontana in the 1970s, The Screwtape Letters shows the devil’s three-pronged fork, mounted upon the barrel of a flame-licked pen, each point/nib dipped in blood/ink.
Screwtape Proposes a Toast shows a horned/vampire bat-headed devil with a corkscrew body.
Simple and yet so clever, and so beautifully executed.
Tony provided the illustration for the poster for the play 'Corpse!', a thriller by Gerald Moon, and put on at The Apollo Theatre, London, in 1983.
The Moscow Puzzles, by Boris M Kordemsky. This is a book of Russian puzzles published by Pelican Books in 1975.
The Witch’s Hat, a children’s book by Irwin Dermer, illustrated by Tony and which was published in 1975, plunges one into surreal fairytale realms:
A children’s height chart for Clarks Shoes gives us a curving giraffe’s neck set against a deep-blue sky, the air around it teeming with enchanting small animals, birds and insects … all the creatures that children are drawn to, equally by their innocence and by their vibrancy.
This 1982 advertisement for ICI Continental Quilts is something I recall gazing at in The Sunday Times Magazine not very long before I was introduced to Tony.
Peter Ashley, of Wolff Olins (the advertising agency responsible for commissioning this piece of work), says in his blog unmitigatedengland.blogspot.com :
“On top of it all he's cheekily put his own book ‘The Witch's Hat’ on the windowsill, and the tapir trademark he did for his agent in a frame up on the dragonfly-wallpapered wall.”
In 1973, John Gorham and Peter Jennings published the book, ‘The English Difference’. Tony provided the cover illustration as well as an inner one.
Tony designed thirty covers for Penguin Books between 1970 and 1977. Penguin art director David Pelham commented,
"....he was a keen reader with a sharp insight, able to absorb the essence of a book and to consequently define it with a strong and relevant image."
One project for Penguin was a series of cover illustrations for the novels of Paul Gallico.
Tony’s own book ‘Remarkable Animals’ is a delight for children and adults alike. Published in 2001, it is reminiscent of parlour games such as Consequences. With the idea deriving from Tony’s father’s set of 1930s cigarette cards called ‘Animalloys’, there are 1000 comical animal combinations, with equally fantastical descriptions, produced by changing the tri-split pages at random. Laughter and a certain amount of wonder inevitably ensue!
The title, I hear from Don, echoes that of Gurdjieff's book, Meetings with Remarkable Men'.
But now to the point of this piece! A book celebrating Tony's work, ‘The World of Tony Meeuwissen: A Life in Illustration and Graphic Art', has just been released!
This exquisite monograph was published by the urbane Nicholas Dawe, the founder of Folio Illustration and Animation Agency and long-time supporter of Tony and his work. It's packed chockfull with illustrations, presented alongside Tony's in-depth and fascinating commentary. There are Appendices shedding even more light on background and process.
There is even a preliminary study (popped into the book just before it went to press) for a recent commission by The Swiss National Co-ordination Centre for Crayfish. Called The Garden of Earthly Crayfish, it is a pastiche based on one of Hieronymous Bosch's more famous works.
I rather like Tony's wry inclusion of Bosch's words:
"For poor is the mind that always uses the ideas of others and invents none of its own."
Don and Tony recently met up to drink wine, to chew the fat and to start incubating ideas. Don came home with a brown-paper-wrapped parcel under his arm, ready to pull open and reveal to me this tight collection of a life’s work, and to start discussing the possibility of a show of Tony’s work in Gallery 9.
Having visited his shows at both Stroud and Cirencester's museums in the last ten or so years, I know the extraordinary impact that his work, when brought together, can have. Both museums declared later that his shows were the most successful they had ever put on.
The Museum in the Park, Stroud, said,
"Across the board our visitors expressed surprise, astonishment and admiration for his very intricate & expressive art works. Tony's humour and clever interpretation with attention to detail appealed to a wide audience of all ages and backgrounds, with many returning for a second look."
The Corinium Museum in Cirencester declared,
"It was a wonderful exhibition .... customers are still talking about it ..."
Now, a few years on, we are preparing, albeit on a slightly smaller scale, to share some of this enchanting work in our part of the county.
Signed copies of Tony’s book are already to be found in Gallery 9. And, as the plan for a show begins to hatch, it is, for us, a most exciting moment in time!