Katharine Imong

Title of dissertation: E Q Nicholson


Textile designer, interior decorator and artist, E Q Nicholson, sister-in-law of artist Ben Nicholson, established a career for herself as a relatively successful designer, emerging in the 1930s, and continuing until the 1950s. E Q’s career can be traced through a collection of fabrics and drawings located at the Whitworth Art Gallery archive, Manchester, and a collection of personal correspondence illuminating E Q’s experiences as a designer, mother and a woman. Considering the changes that affected her work and practice, this study attempts to examine the factors responsible for and influencing these developments, addressing issues of professionalism, gender, class and modernism, and the ways in which they shaped and influenced E Q’s work and practice.