Among the many successes of the Margaret Rope Appreciation Project has been the acquiring and curating of the Margaret Rope Archive, and the range of discoveries that have emanated from it.

For some time now, the Archive, based in Suffolk, has been quietly gathering Margaret-related pieces. Much of the work of the Archive’s volunteers has been in cataloguing and photographing these pieces, with a view to presenting the whole collection on the internet. Interestingly, as well as works and papers, there are now a number of Marga’s personal items in the Archive.
The volunteers are also involved in creating an inventory of items associated with Margaret, wherever they may be.

The Quidenham collection

When Marga died, in 1953 at Quidenham Convent in Norfolk, she left behind a number of cartons & suitcases, all full of vidimuses (initial designs), cartoons, drawings and photos – some going back many years. There were also boxes of items from her workshop – consisting of tools, samples of glass, and more.
In the 1970s, they were loaned to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG) for curation and safe-keeping.

However, BMAG found it hard to devote the necessary resources to the management of them and, with the agreement of the nuns at Quidenham monastery, who retain ownership, accepted the offer of a charitable trust linked to Marga’s family to take them. The Archive had been set up in this trust’s offices. Deliveries from Birmingham started to arrive here in 2017.
It has been a long slow process – items have only come in fits and starts – but, finally, the last of the promised crates have arrived!
(It’s even possible there are more pieces yet in BMAG’s possession, but nothing identified as such has been found).

Last but not least

The recently arrived items from Birmingham include a box of thirteen rolled-up cartoons (and a fragment of one). These are currently being identified and photographed. (There were no documents, sadly).
Many of these cartoons were the templates for the panels to be found today (depicting the historical foundations of the Carmelite order of nuns) in the Quidenham Convent ‘enclosure’, and also for the work undertaken in the Quidenham Convent chapel.

However, there were also another five large crates – full, basically, of glass-fragments, of one sort or another, including rectangular samples with numbers inked on to them. There was also some ‘pot-metal glass’, with curves of varying thickness, and glass-cutting tools.
The fact that she had so much glass in her workshop when she died shows that Marga was still surrounded by the paraphernalia of her profession even in her last illnesses.

The tools were a marvellous find, as they were signed (see pic above left). In fact, signing her tools was a habit that went back to her days at the Glass House Studios some thirty years before. (See A Link To The Past)

New windows for Quidenham

At the time of Marga’s death, she and her collaborators were working on a commission from Quidenham Convent: to produce a row of small panels, as well as a series of large roundels, for the clerestory of its chapel.
Although many of the original designs (‘cartoons’) were created by Marga, the glass work itself was undertaken by her collaborators (often in their own styles) and not finished until around 1956/7.

Among these designs are two versions by Marga for the top-left panel of the clerestory’s ‘Martyrs of Compiegne’ window . (The Compiegne martyrs were a number of Carmelite nuns who were condemned to the guillotine, victims of the French Revolution).
The design that was changed concerns the actual execution scene.

It is interesting to speculate as to why the second version of this scene was taken up. Did Marga change her mind (or did someone ask her to change it?)? There is little wrong with the rejected one (see picture above right), which is consummate, almost a kind of wordless offering, and which concentrates on the nuns’ heavenly destination – while the version actually used (see below) focuses on the machinery of the guillotine, the executioner, and the horror of the real moment.

It is worth wondering whether, in the early 1950s, a time when the world was fully recognising the atrocities of the Second World War, Marga felt she could not shy away from the brutalities of life.
(Even before the war’s end, she had made a small painting commenting on the war – an act which was unusual for her, as she rarely reflected directly on events in the modern world in her art.)

More to come?

In summary, the evidence of these latest accessions is that, even in her very last years, she was still drawing strong designs in cartoon form.
What’s more, it’s hoped that, though this delivery must be considered to be, for now, ‘the last one’ from Birmingham, that does not mean that there might not be more additions in future to the Margaret Rope Archive from BMAG. (It is possible that they even have more cartoons – albeit ones which have not been recorded).

Slowly, the Archive’s collection grows. If you wish to get in touch to discuss the archive’s work, please email the Rope Appreciation Group.

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