Art - Quentin Follies

Given her Bloomsbury connections it was almost inevitable that Cressida Bell would become an artist. The granddaughter of Vanessa Bell and daughter of Quentin Bell, Cressida spent many of her childhood holidays in Charleston House, the rural residence of the Bloomsbury set, and a magnet for artists of every genre at the time. “I wasn’t explicitly encouraged by my parents to go into art”, she tells me. “But I suppose I grew up thinking that it was accessible and possible. It was normal for me to think that you could have your own textile designs on the curtains or your ceramic designs on the crockery”. In fact it was a point that she was to take literally. At the age of six Cressida asked if she could paint the furniture. Typically, her father agreed. “The first piece I painted was a chest of drawers which my brother Julian still has in his house now”, Cressida tells me. “I put my initials on it even then.”
Cressida did, however, have some reservations about the pressures of her family connections. “I was always drawn to the applied arts rather than fine art. I think I thought it would be too tough to follow my family members as a fine artist.” When she was a child Cressida wanted to be a jeweller, and at thirteen she knew that she wanted to go to the Royal College of Art - an ambition which she later achieved. Now she specialises in fabric design, producing prints for rugs, scarves and furnishings which she designs, prints and produces on the premises of her studio in Hackney. When I ask her about her influences in terms of style, she laughs. “A lot of people tend to ascribe influences to me. I get told that my work is aboriginal or African or even very Bloomsbury. But unless I am trying to do a pastiche work I don’t consciously try to work in that way. I’ve always liked ceramics and pottery - particularly Turkish. I use a lot of that for inspiration.”