Provenance
The Artist's Estate; by descent
Note: This vibrant modernist design was a collaboration between Halliwell and the artist Karl Hagedorn (1889-1969) hence the signature 'Hallihag'.
A. E. Halliwell was born in Southport in 1905, attending its art school from 1923 to 1926 before graduating to the Royal College of Art in London and subsequently practising as a professional designer from the 1930s.
While working on commercial commissions, Halliwell taught part-time at Bromley and Beckenham Schools of Art in the late 1930s. In 1938, he was appointed to a full-time post at Camberwell School of Art and Central School of Art and Design, where he established its first course teaching Industrial Design.
His educational ideas, like his artistic ones, had their roots in cubism and the Bauhaus movement, mirroring the academic zeitgeist of the day, seen in Herbert Read’s 1934 book Art and Industry, which informed design courses in the UK until the 1960s. His teaching career was completed at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in Camden, where he took up a post in 1948, remaining there until 1970.