Omega Workshops

Omega Workshops. Decorative arts company founded by Roger Fry in London in 1913 with the twin aims of improving the standard of design in Britain and providing work for the young avant-garde artists in his circle. The headquarters were at 33 Fitzroy Square in Bloomsbury, a handsome Robert Adam house that is now part of the London Foot Hospital; there were two showrooms on the ground floor and two large workshops on the first floor. In a prospectus, Fry wrote that the Workshops would undertake ‘almost all kinds of decorative design, more particularly those in which the artist can engage without specialized training in craftsmanship'. A press view was held on 8 July 1913, and the works on show ‘included tables and chairs, fabrics, bedspreads, clothes, large decorative curtains, screens, designs for murals, and a miscellany of pots, parasols and pencil boxes’ ( Richard Shone, Bloomsbury Portraits, 1976). A critic in The Times wrote ‘what pleases us most about all the work of these artists is its gaiety … we wish them all the success they deserve', and this positive review helped stimulate sales in the early months of the Workshops. Several commissions came from aristocratic patrons, including Lady Ottoline Morrell (see CONTEMPORARY ART SOCIETY). Fry disliked the smooth finish of machine products, and Omega works characteristically have the irregularities of hand craftsmanship, although the furniture it sold was originally bought ready-made and then painted on the premises, and its linens were expertly printed in France. The favourite Omega motifs included flowers, nudes, and abstract patterns, and colour was often very bright; Cubism and Fauvism were strong influences.

Apart from Fry himself, the designers most closely associated with Omega were Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, and several other distinguished artists worked for the enterprise, including Paul Nash and William Roberts. However, all the work was sold anonymously. Artists were paid a regular wage (the financing came from Fry himself and from subscribers including George Bernard Shaw), and this steady income could be of great importance. For example, Nina Hamnett wrote: ‘Feeling brave one morning I went to Fitzroy Square and asked to see Mr Fry. He was a charming man, with grey hair, and said I could come round the next day and start work. I went round and was shown how to do Batiks. I was paid by the hour. I made two or three pounds a week and felt like a millionaire.’ Not all the employees were so charmed by Fry, however, and in October 1913 Wyndham Lewis left in unpleasant circumstances, together with Frederick Etchells, Cuthbert Hamilton (see GROUP X), and Edward Wadsworth. Lewis claimed publicly that Fry had played ‘a shabby trick’ on him and Spencer Gore (not a member of Omega) by cheating them of a commission from the Daily Mail to decorate a room for the forthcoming Ideal Home Exhibition. It is extremely unlikely that Fry would have played ‘a shabby trick’ on anyone ( Edith Sitwell described him as ‘warm-hearted, generous-minded and kindly'), and the affair seems to have originated in a simple misplaced message. However, it caused considerable bad publicity and gave Lewis a lasting hatred of the Bloomsbury Group. In the second issue of Blast he attacked ‘Fry's curtain and pincushion factory’ as ‘abject, anaemic, and amateurish'. Fry, with his Quaker-like calm, refused to be drawn into a public quarrel, but in a letter to Simon Bussy (28 December 1913) he wrote that ‘Lewis's vanity touches on insanity'.

The First World War had a disastrous effect on Omega's sales (Fry in any case had little business aptitude) and in June 1919 the Workshops’ remaining stock was sold off; the company was officially liquidated in 1920. The best idea of Omega furnishings in a contemporary setting can be gained at Charleston, the country home of Bell and Grant at Firle in Sussex. There are also good examples in London at the Courtauld Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum.