Relations and Creations — An Invisible Guest

RELATIONS & CREATIONS

Relations & Creations covers a wide range of conversations relating to pedagogy and practice, mentorship and access to creative industries. This page features a archive montage of interview clips from the Oral History Archive at the Central Saint Martins’ Museum & Study Collection.

Anthony Powell, Costume Designs, 1980. Pencil, 130.81x 93.98 cm.
© Anthony Powell

Nastassja Kinski in Tess (1979). Costume designed by Anthony Powell. All rights reserved. © Anthony Powell

Rob Kessler, Canopy, 2008. © Rob Kessler Rob Kessler, from the series Phy-topic. Illustration for the article “A New Phytopia” published in Infocus Magazine, issue 10 June 2008. © Rob Kessler

Audrey Levy, Maze, produced for Palladio 4, 1956. © Audrey Levy

Audrey Levy, Universe, produced for Palladio 5, 1961. © Audrey Levy

Suddenly Last Summer, theatre production by Ralph Koltai. © Ralph Koltai

Madam Butterfly, theatre production by Ralph Koltai. © Ralph Koltai

The Planets, theatre production by Ralph Koltai. © Ralph Koltai

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This Relations & Creations montage is a soundscape of interview fragments shared by artist and textile designer Audrey Levy, theatre designers Jane and Richard Garnett, and costume designer Anthony Powell.

The soundscapes are based on the Oral History Archive in Central Saint Martins’ Museum & Study Collection.

Archive clips courtesy of the Museum & Study Collection, Central Saint Martins.

Theme tune by Hannah Kane.

Relations & Creations Transcript


Anthony Powell [00:00:16] ...Seeing interesting looking people. Sometimes one got to know them. I remember [], who had the Interiors magazine with the students and me. She was one of those people that you can just tell by looking at her that she was going to do something. 

Interviewer [00:00:33] ...Yes, Jeanetta Cochrane. Can you paint a little picture of her? 

Jane Garnett [00:00:41] I have such fond memories of her. A large woman, full of vitality and fun. I liked her enormously and she gave me really, really good advice, too. I used to worry terribly about not being good enough, and she used to say, one thing you must never do is show people that you're worried in the theatre. So it was a piece of very good advice... 

Anthony Powell [00:01:13] About all the students was a woman called Mary Castle. 

Interviewer [00:01:17] Oh, yes. 

Anthony Powell [00:01:18] Who taught jewellery and was a very distinguished painter. Was one of the official war artists, wasn't she? 

Interviewer [00:01:27] Yes. And she did a number of posters for the London Underground. Yes. 

Anthony Powell [00:01:32] Yes. I think the Imperial War Museum had a big collection... 

Interviewer [00:01:37] Well it was 1948, wasn't it? Or 1947? 

Ralph Koltai [00:01:42] 1948, yeah. Well when you came out of the army. You could get a government grant if you could establish that your education was interrupted by the war. Well, my education was not really interrupted by the war because I was an evening student. I was absent, which is hardly an interruption of one's education, right? But as I mentioned earlier, the secretary of the principal was my girlfriend. So the principal, David Birch, actually remembered me quite well because he knew that I was the boyfriend of the secretary. So I made contact with David Birch. They said he wouldn't like to give me a letter that would say my education was interrupted at Epsom, and I got the letter.

Anthony Powell [00:02:41] ...The last Chelsea Arts Ball held in New Year's Eve that I went to and I remember- 

Interviewer [00:02:46] Sorry. Perhaps you could just elaborate a bit on that, because people, perhaps who are listening to the tape, know what they were? 

Anthony Powell [00:02:52] Well, the Chelsea Arts Ball was a fancy dress ball that I was at every New Year's Eve and it was stopped and it was huge. The [Albert's Hall] was just packed with with merrymakers, you know.

Interviewer [00:03:07] But they cleared all the seats out? 

Anthony Powell [00:03:10] Yes. But it started getting rather rowdy and difficult. So they just said they just stopped this. This is the last ball. 

Jane Garnett [00:03:20] Ralph Koltai and Eileen Disc. 

Interviewer [00:03:21] Oh, yes. 

Jane Garnett [00:03:22] And they both stood out. 

Interviewer [00:03:24] Yes. Tell me something about them both individually. 

Jane Garnett [00:03:31] Thing I remember most about Ralph Koltai was that when I saw [] for the first time, I thought, oh, there's Ralph Koltai. You know, he had that sort of swagger, yes. It was quite unusual... 

Ralph Koltai [00:03:51] Well I can't be a dancer, I can't be an actor, I do have a little bit of talent as an artist, why don't I try? And, of course, the dance theatre connection that I did try and study theatre design and I then applied to Central. 

Interviewer [00:04:14] Yes.

Ralph Koltai [00:04:15] And why the Central? I can't answer. Probably, I didn't know any of the others.

Interviewer [00:04:22] Well because they had a course on theatre design... 

Anthony Powell [00:04:27] And I remember, at midnight, they had a procession of floats going round the arena with an each float was like a stretcher with a person carrying the back in the front and a girl with, more or less, some with lots of clothes on...

Jane Garnett [00:04:47] Who came in with most brilliant work, he was the fine one who stood out. 

Interviewer [00:04:56] Because subsequently, he was not a costume designer, but rather a set designer wasn't he?

Jane Garnett [00:05:03] Yes, but I wasn't thinking of being a costume designer. I was thinking of being a set designer. It was the whole package that I was interested in, which worked out very well in. 

Ralph Koltai [00:05:15] I had an interview with [Morris Kesselman] because Jeanetta Cochrane wasn't there that day, right? And it was [Morris Kesselmann] who saw me.

Anthony Powell [00:05:31] ...Peter Blake, who was just completely smashed? 

Interviewer [00:05:36] Yes, [Laughs]. 

Anthony Powell [00:05:37] Dropping his [Laughs]. The poor girl who was called Enid Forest, who was a theatre student. Who I seem to remember was not wearing many clothes. Was just, you know, thrown to the floor.

Ralph Koltai [00:05:53] The closest to me and who has been the greatest help and mentor to me was the lady teaching design, not costume set, which was [Ruth Keating]. Now, [Ruth Keating], she was really the key to my subsequent development... 

Anthony Powell [00:06:17] I remember that we all met before we went to a great, I suppose, the how many where there was quite a lot. We went as a group. We all went together. And we met a girl, called [Jennifer Agni] whose father was Jeffrey [Agni], and we all met at her flat. And I think we probably changed into our costumes because we're all coming from, you know, the deepest suburbia. I think we changed at Jennifer's flat. So went and then drove to the Albert Hall in costume. Several people have cars, but there's all of us put our ordinary day clothes, as we arrived in in the booth of Jennifer's car and when the time came to leave. She said, and, to this day, I don't believe those words of truth, that she had lost her key and everyone had to go home in their costume [Laughs]...

Ralph Koltai [00:07:24] The penny dropped, of why she said it. She thought I was an artist. 

Interviewer [00:07:31] Oh, I see. 

Ralph Koltai [00:07:31] And had I not moved on away from theatre into fine art? 

Interviewer [00:07:37] I see. Yes.

Ralph Koltai [00:07:41] But it took me half a century for that suddenly to come into my head. That was to me...

Anthony Powell [00:07:53] was covered in sequins. Was he wearing a red wig? But I know that his hair was full of red sequins and jewels. And he got red sequins all over his face. And poor Peter! [Laughs] He had to go home on the milk train, covered in red sequins! And I remember telling the others that he arrives when he arrives. On the opposite platform where all the commuters who know [laughs]... 

Interviewer [00:08:34] ...Can we go back to Eileen Disc? 

Jane Garnett [00:08:36] Yes, well, she. With such a meticulous draftswoman... 

Anthony Powell [00:08:41] Carter gold price, yeah, and having a suit made by this tailor and I remember wearing things like yellow waistcoats and yellow string gloves. I mean, not like arts students at all, you know, terribly dandified. We all went to...

Jane Garnett [00:09:03] as a flashy person myself [Laughs]. She fitted into television so beautifully. I don't know if she's done any theatre, but she was certainly in television and I ended up on television... 

Anthony Powell [00:09:21] ...thousands. And you couldn't buy them, nobody manufactured them. The person who made them was a tailor long gone in New Oxford Street. I can't remember what it was called. We all went to have our trousers made. I remember that sometimes that the ankle, it was so tight and there was no way you could put your trousers on with your shoes on. Sometimes even with their feet or just with socks, you could barely get your foot through the through the ankle. [Laughs]...

Audrey Levy [00:09:56] ...things were so much on the cusp. 

Interviewer [00:09:58] Yes. They weren't interested in the past? It was the future?  

Audrey Levy [00:10:03] And without uninvited, I'm sure. 

Interviewer [00:10:05] So it must have been quite a small place then and he knew more or less all the students? 

Jane Garnett [00:10:13] And for instance, when I left the Central going back to Jeannetta Cochrane, I was offered a job at what I thought was a rundown repertory and I wrote to Jeannetta saying, do you think I really ought to take this job? And she wrote back saying any job is better than no job, take it! And I was so grateful because it wasn't a horrible rep. 

Interviewer [00:10:38] And where was that? 

Jane Garnett [00:10:40] It was at [Huddersfield].

Anthony Powell [00:10:46] ...Became you know, she got to know pretty well and he was terribly interested, he was obsessed with [mime] and he said, one day I want to have my own show. My own [mime show]. And she remembered this young actor and said, look, we've got a week at the theatre. Would you like to come over and do your your show at the theatre? And it was Marcel Marceau. 

Interviewer [00:11:12] Wonderful. 

Anthony Powell [00:11:12] And this was his very, very first. So I saw the first moment, I went to the first night.

Interviewer [00:11:22] ...As part of the protest. 

Audrey Levy [00:11:23] As part of the process. We, the students of the Central school didn't rise up. I remember [] was absolutely brilliant about it. He said, because I think I didn't quite know what to do because they were sitting in and they were kind of around the college and there's a lot of unrest going on and he said, I think I know what we have to do. We'll get them all together and get them to talk to us about what it is that bothers them. He said, you know, talk actually can achieve more than anything else... 

Anthony Powell [00:12:04] I think she was distantly related to Henry James, and she did these amazing monologues. When she first started that, Henry James wrote some of them for her. And they were the least successful ones. The best ones were the ones that she wrote herself...

Interviewer [00:12:22] ...What were their grievances? 

Audrey Levy [00:12:23] They were talking about how they didn't have enough money for equipment or they didn't think the teachers were good enough. It was that sort of thing. 

Interviewer [00:12:34] And was action taken, where possible? 

Audrey Levy [00:12:37] It must have been because it all fizzled out. And it was really Central school students who were kicking up a lot of fuss. So there were lots of left-wingers at Hornsey at that time. It was a very rich period...

Anthony Powell [00:13:00] She would have the most enormous library of books and research and clothes and prints, photographs and drawings, which we never ever saw. I don't know actually who they were meant to be for...

Ralph Koltai [00:13:15] ...but I was still a student when I designed my first production at the Fortune Theatre for a company called [Up by Jackie Bear called Angelique]. And I was still a student. And I got it via [Ruth Keating]...

Anthony Powell [00:13:42] ...of works of reference with costume, which she did with somebody else, which was very good. But she never wrote a book and she never...

Ralph Koltai [00:13:52] ... this opera and said would you? And actually naturally, what would I say. Of course. And I built the set myself in the lower ground floor basement at the Central school...

Anthony Powell [00:14:11] ...which she sort of didn't really share with anybody else. The thing that she did do, again, I'll always be grateful, she was in charge of the private museum for us where we went to the V&A library. And she did teach us absolutely on how to use the library and what was available there. Which I mean, that was just the most wonderful. So, I mean, she justified herself in a way. Just simply through doing that, because, again, that was a life-changing experience. 

Interviewer [00:14:45] Which was a resource for the future...

Interviewer [00:14:47] Something called the episodes? 

Jane Garnett [00:14:50] No. One was called the Fantasy of Fashion. At the Wyndham Theatre with Doris Langley-Moore. 

Interviewer [00:14:59] I've heard of her. 

Jane Garnett [00:15:01] She was of another of these larger than life ladies like Jeanetta Cochrane, who had the most wonderful costume collection, and every now and again she would get out her boxes of costumes and make students get dressed up. And then we would appear, we painted the Wyndham Theatre. It was quite extraordinary because everybody was anybody in the theatre. Got into a costume. Dorothy says was a suffragette...

Ralph Koltai [00:15:39] And I made the classic mistake of building a piece of scenery that was too big to go to the door. [Laughs] 

Anthony Powell [00:15:49] No, but again, the thing that I got from her was the passion for research. She taught me how to research. So that was a huge plus. That was a huge. 

Interviewer [00:16:02] And did you find the library at the Central helpful? 

Anthony Powell [00:16:06] Yes, it was wonderful.

Interviewer [00:16:07] Because it has got quite a significant collection of books on costume design. 

Anthony Powell [00:16:11] It was wonderful...

Ralph Koltai [00:16:16] ...At the Fortune Theatre, and that was the beginning of my career because that then was directed Geoffrey Dunn, and that also led me to my second mentor, [Ruth Keating] being the first, John [Cross]. 

Voice Over [00:16:43] Relations and Creation's is a soundscape composed of clips from the oral history archive in the Museum & Study collection at Central St. Martins. The voices and accounts you have just heard belonged to Ralph Koltai, Audrey Levy, Anthony Powell and Jane and Richard Garnett.

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RELATIONS & CREATIONS

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